The mining industry has some of the best paid operators when it comes to heavy equipment. However, getting a start in that industry can be difficult, especially if you’re raw with no skills or heavy equipment experience. Excavators and excavator training can be an option to opening the door to a mining industry career.

Excavators are used widely across many industries. When we think of excavators, most people think about the machinery used to dig trenches for pipe laying. This has been the traditional role of an excavator, however, they are used far more broadly than that. In fact, excavators have been modified in specialist equipment and if you visit some mining sites, you would be stunned by the equipment in use. As an example, take your regular excavator – increase it in size tenfold, and you have one of the smaller excavators used in some open cut mines. To say they are huge is an understatement. Yet many of those operators started their careers as humble excavator operators, digging trenches on new housing estates.

To get into the mining industry, you need experience operating standard heavy equipment like excavators, bulldozers and loaders. To gain work and experience operating this machinery, you need to have the proper base training. Heavy equipment training should cover a range of machinery – this has a number of benefits to graduates including providing a much wider range of jobs to select from. Being multi-skilled is also one attribute that is preferred by many employers.

If a well paid career in the mining industry sounds attractive then look at heavy equipment training as a starting point. Follow this up with employment as an excavator operator and over time you will develop the skills necessary to gain employment in the mining industry.

Three heavy equipment vehicles that can often be seen working together are loaders, bulldozers and dump trucks. They do make for a perfect team with the bulldozer’s sheer grunt giving it the ability to move a lot of dirt around fairly quickly. Loaders then transfer those piles of dirt to dump trucks to be carted away. You will often see bulldozers, loaders and dump trucks working together in areas such as pre-construction of buildings and roads.

Bulldozers do one thing – they move dirt and they do it well. With plenty of grunt in the engine, and a good strong blade at the front, they can carve out a new road or building site fairly quickly. It is interesting to watch the bulldozer take an area of land that is lightly vegetated and transform it into a flat clean area of land ready for whatever project is intended. The only sign of the bulldozer’s presence being the piles of dirt and rubble scattered around the edges of the site.

Bring in the loader and those piles of dirt and rubble are soon gone, all transferred to waiting dump trucks for removal. Loaders don’t rely on brute forward strength. Their power revolves around their ability to quickly maneuver around a site and to lift large loads, particularly overhead and into dump trucks. Where bulldozers rely on tracks for mobility, loaders are generally wheeled and often articulated, giving them even more mobility.

Dump trucks complete the picture. With open top bodies, they can be quickly and easily filled with dirt and rubble. Being trucks, they can take that load to any destination, including driving on the open roads. Dump trucks get their name from the action of dumping, or tipping the body upwards to ‘dump’ out their load.

These three vehicles work independently yet each relies on the other to complete its job. For those looking at a career in heavy equipment, standard training at ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Schools introduces students to all three vehicles (and many others). If you are looking for hands on training that prepares you for the workforce, check out your heavy equipment training options – perhaps a career as a dump truck driver, bulldozer operator or loader operator is right for you.

When talking to those who dream of a heavy equipment career, it can be hard work trying to get them to think realistically. As with most careers, you can’t expect to start at the top – after all, if you start at the top, the only direction you can go is down. Operating a large excavator or bulldozer is not out of the question, but you do have to get the basics right first and to then work your way to more responsible roles.

If you are considering a career in heavy equipment, start by thinking like an employer – who are you going to employ and what sort of jobs are you going to give them? Novices are obviously going to get the more mundane easy jobs. The harder task will go to those that have experience. Just remember, those experienced operators once started at the bottom, as you will. How they applied themselves to the various tasks then reflected in the types of jobs they were asked to do – the more they applied themselves and learned about their roles, the more difficult the tasks.

So starting with the basics then becomes important. Heavy equipment training that exposes students to a range of equipment and a range of tasks is the best start. Hands on training is obviously the best way to learn. Standing behind someone and watching them may teach you how to use the controls, but it doesn’t give you a ‘feel’ for the equipment. There is so much more to learn by actually sitting in the operator’s seat. Your hands and feet play an important role in ‘feeling’ what the equipment is doing – for example, is it straining, is it hitting rock, and what about the many other situations?

This is what is often termed ‘instinctive’ control of your equipment. Your body feels what is happening and acts almost before your brain clicks into gear. The more hands on experience you gain, the more control you will have over your equipment. ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Schools have been training prospective heavy equipment operators for decades. We can’t teach you ‘instinct’ – you develop that over time. We can, however, teach you to become highly proficient operators, ready to start in the work place and ready to gain that ‘instinct’ in the workplace. Your heavy equipment career starts by getting those basic skills right – and that’s where we can help you.

Loaders are not all the same although in most cases, the operating principles are the same. All loaders perform similar actions – they have a scoop style bucket at the front and it is used to scoop up material, move it to another location, and dump it. A loader can also be used like a bulldozer to spread material like dirt, sand or gravel over an area. That concept remains the same with most loaders with the exception of some of the smaller loaders that can have various attachments added to do other types of work.

It can be disconcerting for a loader operator that is used to operating a larger wheeled loader to suddenly find themselves in the seat of a small skid steer loader, for example. Rather than the bucket arms being placed at the side and forward of the operator, now they are placed behind and over the operator. The steering is also different with skid steer loaders relying on tracks which are independently controlled using foot pedals.

Training on a variety of equipment like loaders, bulldozers and backhoes can help to familiarize operators on these different types of controls. Of course, that training needs to be hands on in-the-cab training, not just a walk around and a demonstration by a trainer. When looking for a training program involving heavy equipment, ask the training organization what equipment they have and which equipment will you be receiving hands on experience with. Don’t assume that all heavy equipment training programs are the same.

Don’t forget to include ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Schools on your list of possible training school options. We provide training across a range of heavy equipment including loaders, bulldozers, graders and backhoes. If you’re interested in a heavy equipment career, talk to us about where your closest school is and what equipment they have available at that location.

Think excavators and you probably think ditches. However, the modern excavator does far more than just dig ditches. You will find excavators at work on rivers doing dredging work, in forestry plantations, in the mining industry, in road and rail construction and in general construction. Wherever there is earth moving involved, you’re likely to find an excavator or it’s cousin, the backhoe.

Excavator training is not really a difficult course to get through. They may look like technically complex machines, and from an engineering point of view, they are. From an operators point of view, operating an excavator is only a matter of learning what the levers and pedals actually do – get a grasp of that and you’re halfway there. Of course, you also need to learn other components such as safety, basic maintenance and how an excavator performs in different soil types.

It only takes three weeks to complete a heavy equipment training program that includes excavator operator training. At the completion of the three weeks of training, you should be proficient in a number of machines including bulldozers, graders, loaders and excavators. Once you have completed your training, the most important part of your career begins – on-the-job training – and that lasts a lifetime.

Does operating an excavator sound like a career for you? If so, contact ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Schools for details on our next training course and the location of the nearest training school to you. Excavator operators are well paid in today’s workforce and their careers are interesting and involve a lot of variety – the one thing you won’t be doing is digging ditches all the time.

One of the things you will notice about graders is that they tend to work on their own. This can be a little misleading because graders are really just one part of a large team – a very integral part of that team. Road making, for example, is done in stages with different heavy equipment handling each stage. A grader cannot commence until a bulldozer has finished its work; likewise, the hot-mix machines cannot commence until the grader has completed its work.

As part of a team, you will often see that roads are built in sections. A bulldozer will work on section one and, once completed, move onto section two. In the meantime, the grader sets to work on section one. When completed, it too moves on to section two. In a well oiled and efficient team, each piece of equipment finishes its job just in time for the next unit to come. They are all working as a team and before you know it, a new highway has been constructed.

Heavy equipment training at ATS Heavy Equipment Training Schools offers students experience on a range of equipment. This is useful knowledge going into a work place since operators know what each unit of equipment is capable of. It all helps a team knit together over time – a factor you can see in a well oiled team that seems to complete jobs on time and with few problems.

If you enjoy working as both an individual and a team player then working as a heavy equipment operator could be an option. A grader is only one of the many options available, yet it can be one of the most challenging and exacting options in the heavy equipment range. Interested? Then contact us for more information on training dates and for the closest ATS school to you.

Every job has its good points and its bad points and for loader operators it’s no different. One of the downsides to living on a continent like the North America is the unpredictable nature of the weather. Whether it’s tornadoes, hurricanes or wild fires, they all leave devastation in their wake and someone has to clean up after them.

In many cases, the devastation is complete. Homes, schools and buildings in general are either totally destroyed or damaged to the point that repair is impossible. In these situations, bulldozers often come in and literally clear the area – the scrape it clean. The problem with bulldozers is that they are limited in what they can do. They can clear all areas, but effectively all they are doing is pushing everything into piles. It is the loader operators that have to come in and load everything into dump trucks ready to carted away.

It can be a tough job at times. You are clearing away people’s lives. There are treasures that cannot be reclaimed – photos, mementos, furniture, along with the buildings themselves – what were once people’s homes. Like I said, it’s a tough job. But someone has to do it and work is work. If you don’t do it, someone else will.

We can train you to be an effective loader operator; we can provide you with all the skills required for the position. What we can’t do is teach you how to mentally handle this type of work. Some people just switch off and treat it like every other job; for others, their heart goes into every load, particularly if they are from that community. There is one upside to this – no matter how much destruction there is, people will always stand up and start again. Before long, the site you are about to clear will once again have a home standing there.

People will pick up their lives and move on. So while the job may have a downside, in reality, if you’re not there to do it, people can’t move on and start again. Bulldozer and loader operators are our society’s first steps to rebuilding lives. So when looking at a site that has suffered some calamity, look on the bright side – your there to help rebuild lives!

It may be March and spring may be in the air but try telling that to the residents of Homer in Alaska. They had to call on every grader in the area to help clear out several feet of snow that had fallen in a late blizzard. One of the joys of operating heavy equipment like road graders is that you never know what sort of job you could be called on to do next.

For the people of Homer, I am sure they are happy to have had graders and grader operators in their midst. Mind you, many of the students may not have been. Their schools were closed for the first time in over 20 years and it wasn’t until road graders had cleared the way that they could re-open. For those of us in warmer climates, moving snow at this time of the year is probably the last thing on our mind.

Becoming a grader operator is not as difficult as many people would imagine. A three week heavy equipment training program will provide sufficient skills and knowledge to gain a start in the workforce. From there, it’s really a matter of gaining as much experience as possible. With experience comes more knowledge and over time experience in more trying conditions.

ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Schools deliver nationally accredited training in a wide range of equipment including road graders, excavators, bulldozers and backhoes. Each training course runs for three weeks and we have training schools across the country. If you are interested in operating heavy equipment like road graders (perhaps not in Alaska), then give us a call. We can advise on course start dates and heavy equipment operator school close to your location.

With spring in the air, and on everyone’s footsteps, gardens everywhere are coming into bloom. At the same time, landscapers with their skid steer loaders are out preparing new gardens or rebuilding those that suffered through winter. Often considered toys, these small machines enable landscaping crews to complete jobs in a fraction of the time taken to do the job by hand.

Skid steer loaders are well suited to these smaller jobs, or jobs that need to be done in small areas. Driveways, new patios, areas that need re-turfing and of course large scale garden beds are areas where these little loaders work well. What most people don’t realize is that the skills required to operate a skid steer loader are similar to those required to operate larger heavy equipment. Similar but not the same.

At ATS Heavy Equipment Training Schools, many of our heavy equipment operator training programs include skid steer loader training. These mini loaders have a steering system that can see them turn 180 on the spot – similar to bulldozers and other tracked equipment. However, their bucket operations are very similar to that of a conventional loader.

Training on this equipment then is the perfect companion for those wanting to enter the heavy equipment industry. When work for larger machinery like loaders, bulldozers or backhoes is a little quiet, you can always find work with smaller equipment like the skid steer loader.

You can become proficient in a wide range of heavy equipment including skid steers in as little as three weeks through ATS – if this is a career option for you – contact us for more information.

Across the nation right now you will find hundreds of backhoe operators hard at work digging out foundations for new buildings and new homes. Backhoes are one of the key tools used by builders to prepare the way for their construction gangs. When you think about it, backhoes are perfect for the job. They can clear the area using their front scoop then turn around and use their buckets to dig the required trenches.

Backhoe operators have one of the most varied jobs out of all the heavy equipment operators. They need to be able to work as a loader operator using the scoop and then turn around in their seat and to start working as an excavator operator. Like excavators, backhoes come with a range of attachments that can be used for all sorts of jobs.

Heavy equipment training through ATS Heavy Equipment Training Schools prepares students for work as backhoe operators. Not only do you gain experience and training using a backhoe, you also gain experience and training using front end loaders, excavators and bulldozers and that is just to name a few. This provides graduates with a broad range of skills and for backhoe operators, prepares the well for the workplace.

If you are looking for a change of pace, a change in careers, and to get out into the great outdoors then a career as a heavy equipment operator could be just the ticket. Training only requires three weeks of your time – three weeks that will set you on the path to a brand new career.