When you spend most of your day operating heavy equipment, your office is the cab, it’s where you are in control, and you know what is happening. However, without good communication lines, it can be a very isolating place as well. Operators need the ability to concentrate of course, but isolation is not an answer, ensuring in-cab communications are as good as they can be has become very important, for a number of reasons. Here are some things that can be problematic if communications are not maintained correctly.

• Safety – We all hope it never happens to us, but accidents do occur, and no matter how minor they are an investigation will always examine communications leading up to the incident. Good communication systems that are working correctly will always improve safety on site, both for heavy equipment operators and other workers on the site.
• Work Schedules – One of the costliest parts of any project is completion delays, missing deadlines, and failing to meet work schedules. Heavy equipment operators really benefit here from better communications, as it can help individuals and teams work more efficiently. On large projects, even small improvements can add up to big-time savings and can be the difference between meeting and missing a deadline.
• Teamwork – Smooth running of any site relies on teamwork, that operators are where they are supposed to be at the right time. However, given the nature of the industry, few people get to work in the same team often enough to build that relationship, so making sure the team functions properly each time is all about communication. Being able to adapt to a new environment and understanding how each group works is important for operators, and at the core of that is improved communication.
• Reliance on visual signals – Think of all the signals a heavy equipment operator has to take note of during any site operation to ensure the safety of themselves and others on site, there are hand signals, flashing lights, and flags used as guides or alarms, and this can lead to a problem known as alarm fatigue. This is where operators become overwhelmed by too many visual alarms and are unable to process them all. In-cab communications should not replace visual signals, but they complement visual alarms very well and can reduce the chance of an alarm being missed due to alarm fatigue.
• Stress – Operators isolated from the rest of the project in a cab without good communication can become stressed. Two-way communications allow questions to be asked and answered and operators to understand the project better and feel a part of the team instead of separate, helping reduce the stressfulness of the work.

There are many very good reasons to ensure cab communications are working well on any project, heavy equipment operators should always be in communication throughout any project.

A lot of people who want a career in heavy equipment ask if they need to be trained or if on-the-job training (OJT) is available for heavy equipment operators. The short answer is, yes, heavy equipment operations training would be beneficial to your career. The longer answer is a bit more nuanced.

There are still some employers who offer OJT for heavy equipment operators, but not all of them. If your goal is to become a forklift operator, there are plenty of small companies that will train you and certify you on their premises. However, long-term, your career would benefit by attending a training school that is certified and that meets OSHA’s standards for training and certification.

When it comes to large heavy equipment like mobile cranes and backhoes, you are much better off seeking a career training school with a solid reputation.

Even among employers who train on-site, a lot of them use training schools like Associated Training Services to administer the training and certification programs. In that case, you are getting your training through your employer, but it’s not necessarily by your employer. That’s still a recommended path. Large heavy equipment and industrial employers come out ahead by training and certifying many new hires at once rather than paying travel expenses, housing, and training costs for each one.

In short, the best heavy equipment training schools will take individual students and perform on-site training and certification for large employers. Either way, your career is in good hands. Take OJT training from a small employer and you may end up having to boost your career with your own training anyway.

Heavy equipment operators have a difficult job, and sometimes it’s as thankless as it is difficult. You could be a mobile crane operator, a rigger/signalperson, a truck driver, or a heavy equipment operator. But who are the people that support these positions and keep the work site operating while guys like you are operating the equipment? Here are five of them:

1. Payroll/human resources – Someone has to process your paycheck and make sure your insurance paperwork is completed so that you have the proper benefits. Your company’s human resources department will assist you with any questions you have about benefits and issue your paychecks.
2. Dispatch – In trucking companies, one person is usually responsible for dispatching truckers. They receive manifests and notify drivers of their next delivery route. They may even be responsible for assigning you your truck. You typically do not want to upset this person. They have a lot of power and you could find yourself without work easily if you cross the wrong one.
3. Rigger – The rigger is your construction work site’s safety person. He is responsible for making sure all of your equipment, especially lifting equipment, is safe to operate. He may even be responsible for performing some maintenance duties.
4. Supervisor – Your work site supervisor will likely be a former heavy equipment operator. He could have started out with your job. They rarely operate the equipment anymore, but their main task is to ensure that the work site is managed well and managed efficiently. They could be your direct line supervisor or two or three steps above you.
5. Maintenance – If your equipment breaks down during operation, you may have to create a work order and call in the maintenance crew. Unless the situation involves a safety violation, the rigger is not usually involved. What we’re talking about here is any maintenance issue above routine operator maintenance. You’re supposed to perform your own equipment checks before you operate it.

There may be a good chance you’re cut out for one of these jobs. If not, you should respect those who are.

How to operate a variety of heavy equipment is the obvious thing you learn while in heavy equipment school. You’ll learn to operate everything from a backhoe to an all-terrain forklift. But that’s not all. There are six other things you’ll learn that will help you throughout your heavy equipment career.

1. Grade Reading – Do you know how to read a grade? It’s very important for a lot of the work you’ll do, from excavation to clearing. You’ll learn how to tell the difference between a 45-degree grade and a 49-degree grade.
2. Laser Levels – Laser levels are construction measuring tools that you’ll see a lot and you should know how to operate them.
3. Soils – Different types of soils are more difficult to move than others. We’ll teach you how to identify the types of soil and how to operate the various equipment in each type of soil.
4. Safety – Heavy equipment safety is one of the most important lessons you’ll ever learn. We give you the full scoop.
5. Site Layouts – Layout management is very important in construction work. You don’t want to create collision courses between your various heavy equipment, so you’ll need to learn a little bit about how to layout a construction site so that your team is more efficient and more safe.
6. Heavy Equipment Maintenance – If you don’t maintain your equipment, it won’t last. We’ll teach you everything you learn and need to know at the operator’s level to keep your equipment operating smoothly for the job.

In heavy equipment school, you learn more than just sitting in a bucket and pulling levers. You learn how to succeed on the construction site.

Much of the country is seeing subzero cold this month. But along with that cold, we are also seeing an increase in accidents because the cold affects both the equipment and the operator. Heavy equipment safety means understanding the difference a drop in temperature makes.

Effects of Subzero Cold on Heavy Equipment

When metal gets extremely cold, it becomes brittle. It cannot absorb impact and pressure the way it normally would in warmer conditions. This means that the standard range of ductility and flexibility is severely limited. The assorted fluids keeping all the parts moving also change in subzero conditions, becoming thick or even useless.

Extra time must be taken to warm up the machinery before expecting it to perform optimally. Awareness of site conditions is also imperative. For example, the frozen ground may require jackhammers instead of a backhoe. Frost causes slippery surfaces where no danger exists in warmer weather.

Effects of Subzero Cold on Heavy Equipment Operators

People who are cold do not perform at their peak any better than equipment does. Response time slows, muscles and joints are stiff and prone to injury, and it’s easy to be in danger of hypothermia, frostbite, or dehydration. Care must be taken for the operators to be dressed appropriately for the conditions they are working in. Today’s performance wear can keep an operator warm in the active/passive cycles that once caused problems, but it has to be worn along with good socks, boots, gloves, etc.

The heavier clothing worn in subzero cold muffles the hearing and can limit sight — both essential for safety. Thicker gloves change the way an operator sense controls, and big boots can change footing as the operator gets on or off the equipment.

During the classes at ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Training School, safety is discussed frequently — at times it seems repetitive. That repetition is on purpose, to get safety procedures so familiar they become automatic. Professionals practice safe standards and are familiar with the changes subzero conditions can make on those standards.

We hear it from the time we are small: warnings about the possibility of falling when we are in a hurry. When the location is a large piece of heavy equipment, rushing to get on or off always has the potential for an accident. Adding wintry conditions and bulky clothing increases the possibility into a probability.

The Main Cause of Falls From Heavy Equipment

Gravity.

That isn’t a funny comment, that’s the truth. If you think that losing your balance or slipping will not result in going down, you are not thinking clearly. Unless you are working on the space station in zero gravity, you have to keep your mind on what you are doing when climbing up or down a giant machine because the ground is far enough away to hurt when you hit. Add the torque of catching your clothing on a snag or banging into metal while you fall and the results are painful. They also are job- or life-threatening.

Gravity Rules You Can’t Ignore

When you get your heavy equipment operator training at a reputable school like ATS, one of the big themes you hear repeated is safety. The rules regarding heavy equipment safety have been developed through sad experience. See if you can imagine what happens if one of these rules is ignored:

• 3 points of contact at all times when getting on or off 
• pre-trip inspection for loose bolts or icy surfaces
• use the handrails and steps on the equipment; never jump off
• face the equipment when getting on or off
• never get on or off a moving piece of equipment
• keep cabs clean and uncluttered
• wear non-slip boots

Each one of these rules has a story behind it, told by countless operators who learned the hard way that gravity always wins.

One of the biggest safety mistakes a heavy equipment operator can make is being overly-fatigued on the job. It doesn’t seem like being tired would make much of a difference, but fatigue affects your competency as much as drugs or alcohol can. Here’s part of what happens when you are tired:

• your reaction time slows down
• your thought processes get goofy
• your chance of having an injury-producing accident increases

Don’t Let Fatigue Wreck Your Future

It isn’t always fun to be the one going to bed in time to get enough sleep (7 hours at least), but it really makes a difference when you are at work the next day. Heavy equipment operators are controlling some of the most dangerous things on the job site because in a collision between the machine and the person, the machine wins every time. 

ATS instructors are very careful to get the safety procedures drilled into the minds of the students in the heavy equipment operator programs. But tired operators don’t have the ability to respond quickly when the unexpected happens, and it’s dangerous. If you are constantly tired on the job, the small mistakes you make can quickly become overwhelming and your brain isn’t able to keep up. That’s when people get hurt.

If you can mix up your job duties to make the shift less yawn-worthy, do it. Plan breaks for coffee or other caffeine drinks midway through the shift, particularly if you are working nights. All that healthy stuff like balanced diet and fluid intake, enough exercise and stress reduction, are thing that affect fatigue levels. Healthy people have more energy.

What is the cost of not paying attention to what you are doing? Sometimes that cost isn’t much, because you are sitting in a chair at home zoning out during a commercial. But if you are sitting in the driver’s seat on the job, the price of not paying attention can be far higher than anyone wants to pay.

When a heavy equipment operator isn’t paying attention to what they are doing, bad things can happen. Most of your training at ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Training School will have safety rules repeated over and over again. Your teachers will be discussing what can happen, talking about why that rule applies, and sharing stories of what they’ve experienced. In a lot of ways, you’ll think that safety is being talked about too much.

But there’s a reason why ATS has a reputation for training some of the best heavy equipment operators around, and that reason is the high standards of performance our graduates are taught. Part of the high standards of performance are safety standards that have been repeated so many times they become automatic.

Even if you aren’t paying attention, if safety is a habit, then you’ll be more apt to stay safe on the job. But the best idea is to pay attention to all you’ve been taught and the conditions you are working in. Paying attention to what’s going on around you, to where your machine is and your blind spots, will keep everybody safe.

Heavy equipment is too big for a mistake to be minor most of the time. Mistakes are costly, and that’s why the best heavy equipment operators pay attention to what they are doing even when it’s routine.

A factory owner once said that when he investigated workplace accidents, most of the time he was told, “I didn’t think it would do that.” His response usually was, “that’s right, you didn’t think!“

It’s easy to get accustomed to being around danger when you are working around heavy equipment and machinery. After all, most of the time things are fine, so the sense of caution begins to go away. Here’s a few of the safety rules you do have to keep thinking:

• Communication is essential – Hand signals, two-way radios, high-visibility vests and helmets, and a backup warning alarm have to be used so that everybody knows where everybody else is. In the contest between human bodies and big machines, the machine wins every time.
• Rollover protection and seat belts save lives – A lot of dead operators didn’t think it would tip and they were wrong.
• Hearing protection and other safety gear are there for a reason – You might not think it is going to make you deaf but wait a few years.
• Hold on to the safety handles when you get off the machine – Jumping off the equipment is something that the guy with the broken ankle didn’t think would happen.
• Inspecting and maintaining your equipment keeps you from mistakenly thinking everything is working fine – Do a pre-shift walk around to make sure.

These are the safety rules that get repeated over and over (along with a lot of other good information) when you get your heavy equipment operator training at ATS. It gets said in different ways at different times until you think you will never forget it. That’s the plan — we want you to know the safety procedures so well that even if you aren’t thinking, you’ll still be automatically following the rules and everybody will stay safe.

Have you ever visited an antique tractor show? Some of them have exhibit barns full of big equipment from the past, and the future of safety come a long way. You’d think there’d still be blood and entrails on some of the early farm equipment. It is so dangerous! Nothing protecting the rider/operator from the moving parts — the driver’s seat is a little metal thing suspended in mid-air above gears, and the foot controls are a recipe for disaster. It’s obvious that every safety measure in the history of heavy equipment has been the result of a tragedy.

That’s the past. Today, the present safety measures almost seem like an overload to many operators, but it’s a good idea to be reminded of why they are there. Safety isn’t something that can be completely regulated because an accident happens in real-time and can’t be predicted with accuracy. That’s why ATS trains every student in classroom knowledge of safety regulations and seat time application while operating real equipment because someone who knows the possibilities can respond faster than somebody who panics at a new situation. Accidents on the job are not always operator error, but the operator who is alert and well-trained can keep the accidents from compounding.

The future of heavy equipment safety is hard to predict because technology will let manufacturers design and build machinery that makes today’s heavy equipment look as scary as those exhibit barns full of antique death traps. But one thing is sure, if you get your training at an accredited provider with National Certifications the safety training will keep up with the times. ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Training School has the experience from our past, the National Certifications right now for your training needs, and the commitment to maintain our high standards of training operators who know how to do the job safely in the future.