Loaders come in all shapes and sizes ranging from the little skid steer type loaders up to giant earth moving machines – and I do mean giants. For many of us, the most common type of loader seen is the standard wheeled loader or front end loader. You typically see these on most building sites carrying dirt, sand or gravel to where it is needed. The second most common type would be the mini loaders or skid steer loaders. These are popular with landscape gardeners and hire yards.

While I wouldn’t belittle operators by saying that loaders were easy to operate, they are at least one of the easiest units of heavy equipment to learn to operate. As such they can be the easiest path into a career as a heavy equipment operator. This is the path that many operators take, starting with loaders and moving up to backhoes, excavators and bulldozers further down the track.

Most heavy equipment training programs include all of these units in their training repertoire. Once you graduate you will have some knowledge and experience on a range of equipment. Loaders may just be the least competitive field when it comes to job opportunities. The field of heavy equipment operations can have a career path – it’s just not so easy to map out as everyone has different attributes. Loaders can be seen as the start of that career path.

ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Schools provides training on a wide range of heavy equipment including loaders, backhoes, excavators and bulldozers. At the end of your three week training period, you are ready to enter the workforce as a trained and skilled heavy equipment operator. You can choose to specialize in any unit of heavy equipment, however, you may find that loaders are your easiest entry.

One of the benefits of undergoing heavy equipment training for machinery like backhoes is that it doesn’t discriminate on age, gender or ethnicity. What determines a good operator is skill. Of course, like all jobs, there are other attributes such as commitment, punctuality and reliability that are important. But skill is the most important attribute of them all.

When it comes to age, there are few barriers. In the workplace, the minimum age is 18 to work as a heavy equipment operator and here at ATS, our minimum age to enroll in a heavy equipment training program is 18. Maximum age? So long as you can pass a medical test, have good eyesight and hearing and can operate all the pedals and levers – there is no upper limit. Employers may balk a little at employing a ninety year old, but then again, if the operator is healthy and good at his job then age shouldn’t factor into the equation.

Backhoes are a popular starting point for many new operators. They can be tricky to begin with but it doesn’t take long to become proficient. The real tricky situations arise when it comes time to use one of the many attachments that can be fitted. Over the years we have also seen many women entering the field as heavy equipment operators. Bulldozers, backhoes and excavators are always popular equipment to gain a start in.

If you have recently left school, or perhaps in mid life and just been made redundant, you could consider a career as a heavy equipment operator. The pay is reasonably good, the conditions are good and, at present, jobs are available. Whether it is backhoes, bulldozers or any other unit of heavy equipment, age is not a barrier to most people – and that most likely includes you!

We often discuss some of the more unusual jobs that heavy equipment operators can be called upon to do at times. Excavators have a role that is important in our society, a role that most of us will require at some stage, yet a role we will not care about at the time. I am of course talking about our final resting place. Mini excavators are often the equipment of choice these days when it comes to digging burial plots.

It’s not a subject we all want to discuss – but then, it is a job that is required in our society and someone has to do it. If you have ever seen an empty burial plot, you will be struck by how precise they can be. Rectangular, straight walls and perfect corners. That actually takes precision work by a skilled operator to achieve that finish – skills that can take quite some time to fully develop.

When developing any skills in life, the end result will almost always depend on the platform that you are building those skills on. If your original training has been poor then no matter how much practice and experience you get, you are only reinforcing a poor skill set and bad habits. Quality training provides a solid platform from which you can build skills to a high level.

Employers know this already. When looking at resumes, or interviewing applicants for a vacancy, one of the questions they want answered is ‘where you did your training’. If your heavy equipment training provider has a poor reputation you can forget the job. If your training provider has a good reputation then your chances of securing the job increase dramatically.

ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Schools have a solid reputation for delivering good quality operators that are ready for the workplace. Excavators get some of the interesting jobs – like digging burial plots. Are you interested in becoming an excavator operator? Contact us if you are.

Dump trucks are one of the busiest vehicles on any construction site. If they are not bringing in truck loads of building materials they are carting truck loads out. At times, they will do both, bringing in, say, a load of sand and then filling up with a load debris that needs to be removed.

The role of a dump truck driver is never boring. In fact, you are on the go almost all day. The only time you get to pause is when your truck is being filled. These days, that doesn’t take very long at all. There are many areas that utilize hoppers – you simply drive your truck under the hopper, the hopper is opened and within a minute you have a full load. At the construction site, loaders. backhoes and excavators can quickly fill a dump truck with material that needs carting away.

Career prospects for dump trucks are good with demand for drivers fairly steady all year round. The peak in demand around the middle to the end of spring as construction companies take on new drivers to help meet contract deadlines. Now is one of the best times to gain one’s qualifications as a dump truck driver since that recruitment drive for drivers will soon start in earnest.

ATS Truck Driver Schools can have you trained and ready for work in as little as three weeks. Dump truck driver training is undertaken using both in class and behind the wheel training sessions. Behind the wheel sessions involve you doing the driving, not watching someone else doing the driving. Every kid wants to be a dump truck driver when playing in their sand pit, but is the big kid in you still wanting to drive a dump truck in a real life sand pit?

ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Schools have 10 training locations spread around the nation. Each training school offers heavy equipment training in a variety of equipment. Each training school is different and the range of equipment available at each one may vary.

Heavy equipment covers a very broad range of equipment. Small skid steer loaders are considered heavy equipment and the range goes up to include some of the super machinery used in mining. It is impossible to offer training in every type of machinery, however, by providing a cross section of equipment in training, students gain skills in the most common types in use. This equipment may include:

• Backhoes
• Wheel loaders
• Scrapers
• Excavators
• Bulldozers
• Road graders
• Rock trucks
• Skid Steers and
• All-Terrain Forklifts

Many of the skills are interchangeable to a certain extent. What most people don’t realize is that heavy equipment operation involves many different skills. For example, hand-eye coordination is important in most jobs. However, for some heavy equipment your hands may be going in different directions. A good example is an excavator where one hand is perhaps pushing the boom out, the other hand is opening the bucket to release the contents while the feet are controlling the swing of the entire unit. This coordination is a skill that is transferable to other machinery, even if the controls are unfamiliar at first.

If you are looking at a career in heavy equipment then ATS could be a smart choice when it comes to heavy equipment training. The wide range of equipment means you will gain a good grounding of skills. Add to this the in-class training in areas such as safety, soils and site layouts and you have the complete training package.

Yes, you read correctly. Dancing excavators. I write this post, not so much to highlight the fact that excavators can dance, but to highlight the precision of the excavator operators. In one video, whilst the excavators don’t appear to be that big, when you have an excavator bucket and broom traveling at speed, it will do some damage when it comes into contact with something.

Precision comes from experience. However, that experience is based on the initial training that an excavator operator receives. If the initial training is poor, then the on-the-job training skill development becomes so much harder. In fact, many new operators walk away from the profession because they cannot cope, and they reason they cannot cope is because they have had such poor training to begin with.

A well trained operator will be confident (without being cocky) when taking control of his/her equipment. The more time they spend using that piece of equipment, the more confident they become – in fact, an operator soon learns to trust instinct as much as anything else. That is a skill that does take time to develop.

Good quality training starts with the selection of a training organization. ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Schools has a long history of providing quality excavator training that is relevant to today’s workplace. We pride ourselves on providing our students with a solid platform of skills and knowledge that enable them to quickly gain on-the-job work skills. In effect, our quality training helps an operator fast track their career.

If you are looking to develop the skills similar to those shown in the video, contact us at ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Schools and we can discuss what options are available in becoming a heavy equipment operator.

Loaders are already working away, preparing the way to spring and summer work. Spring is not that far away although you wouldn’t know it given some of the weather conditions at present. However, in some areas, the snow is turning to water and starting to run off. What it is leaving behind is often churned up mud and pot holes. Dump trucks can’t get in with fill so it is left to loaders to do the work – they at least can get across boggy ground.

That is one of the advantages of loaders, they can cover a diverse range of terrains and offer construction companies a lot of diversity. Loaders are also efficient, being able to carry large payloads with respect to their overall size. Not only can they carry these payloads, they can spread the material fairly evenly, effectively carrying out two jobs.

Loader operators are the key. Well trained, they can get loaders to do a lot of tasks, tasks that others may find beyond them. That training starts with a credible training organization that understands what skills employers need and how to train students to meet those needs safely. ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Schools has the accreditation to deliver nationally recognized heavy equipment training. This includes training on loaders, bulldozers, excavators and motor graders.

Entering the profession of heavy equipment operations is not as difficult as most people imagine. You can start by undertaking a comprehensive three week training program that provides the skills to get you into the work place. Like many occupations, you deliver higher skills on the job – provided, of course, that you have a good foundation of skills.

If you’re looking to enter the profession then gain that good skills foundation through ATS – contact ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Schools now to discuss your training needs and for more information on our next heavy equipment training program.

Everywhere you look there is bound to be a unit of heavy equipment hard at work. There are bulldozers clearing land, graders preparing roads, excavators and backhoes digging trenches and loaders moving what ever it is that needs moving. But which unit of heavy equipment is the most popular? Now, by most popular, I refer to most number of units sold and most number of units in operation at any one time. The answer may surprise you although on reflection, it shouldn’t. The answer? Believe it or not it’s the skid-steer loader.

I said that, on reflection, you can understand why. First, it is the largest unit of heavy equipment sold. Second, there are more skid-steer loaders in operation today than any other unit of heavy equipment. The reasons are fairly understandable too. They are cheap to buy, efficient when it comes to fuel use, easy to maintain and easy to transport. Add to that the versatility with the range of attachments and the fact their lighter weights cause little damage during operations and you have one handy little piece of equipment. It also helps that they are fairly easy to learn to operate as well.

Just about every construction yard, construction company and local government authority has a skid-steer loader. Most heavy equipment operators could jump into the seat of a skid-steer loader and operate it as well – perhaps not as efficiently as a full time operator, but they could get the job done.

Learning to operate a skid-steer loader is not that difficult. Most respectable training companies like ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Schools include skid-steer loaders in their heavy equipment training programs because of their popularity. If you want to get behind the controls of one of the countries most popular units of heavy equipment, give us a call to discuss your possible training options.

Heavy equipment careers cover a broad spectrum in both machinery types and industries. You could work in construction, mining, forestry, agriculture and/or landscaping – just to name a few. You can find work in almost every corner of the world, even here at home. When it comes to machinery, I don’t have enough room on this page to list them all. You can break them down into generalized categories. These include:

• Pushing – this includes bulldozers and graders
• Excavating – this includes excavators and backhoes
• Carriers – this includes front end loaders, backhoes and fork lift trucks

I have been very brief in each description. For example, some of those units of equipment could be further broken down to skip loaders or mini excavators, for example, and I haven’t even covered heavy equipment like scrapers. If you enter the mining industry then you will be introduced to specialized equipment like shovels – in reality, massive excavators that spend all day shoveling tons of rock into trucks. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

There are jobs everywhere for heavy equipment operators, even in the military. If you have experience with heavy equipment you could even find work in our ports, on oil wells, at rail yards and in some of our largest factories. You would be surprised at which sectors of the workplace use heavy equipment – you would also be surprised at what sort of work they do.

There is one common thread that runs through these roles in heavy equipment. A successful heavy equipment career starts with a training program that provides experience on a range of equipment. ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Schools is accredited to delivering and assess students in the use of heavy equipment. If you are looking for a heavy equipment career – contact us here at ATS – we will get your started.

Heavy equipment technology is gaining new ground all the time. Sometimes, the technology is not necessarily with the heavy equipment, but with the tools used alongside heavy equipment. Take excavating as an example. Excavators have changed remarkably over the last 20 years and so have some of the tools. When I say tools, I am not referring to the attachments.

Excavators dig trenches. However, trenches can create problems, particularly if the sides start to back in to the trench. To stop this, and to provide a safe work place, shoring is used to hold the walls together. What does this have to do with the excavator? Plenty. First, as an operator you find that a trench can be dug in half the time compared to ten years ago. Secondly, excavator operators now need to learn how to work around any shoring that has been erected- the need to develop new skills.

New heavy equipment technology means that all operators require a level of training that enables them to learn to work with that new technology. ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Schools prides itself on being up-to-date with the latest trends in heavy equipment. We pass this along to our students so they can, where appropriate, put them into use once they have completed their training.

Does a career in heavy equipment call? If so, contact us at ATS to see where and when our next heavy equipment training course commences. Your new career could start in as little as three weeks and you may well be up to date with all the latest in heavy equipment technology.