The life of a heavy equipment operator can be one of financial security and respect within a community. These men and women are recognized as the force behind the building of the roads citizens travel on and the buildings where many work. With the financial rewards and recognition comes a lot of responsibility, these heavy equipment jobs can be extremely dangerous if the proper precautions are not taken. A heavy equipment operator must have the skills required to complete his job in a quality manner, but heavy equipment safety must always be his or her number one priority.

A construction site is a fairly dangerous place in general. When several pieces of heavy equipment are working the same site, this just multiplies the danger. The chances of a serious incident occurring increase if people are not properly trained on heavy equipment safety. Some of the more horrific accidents can happen simply by not paying attention to one’s surroundings. Many a worker has been crushed by equipment overturning or even run over by a piece of heavy equipment. Others have been hurt or even killed when getting caught between a wall and a piece of equipment. All of these accidents can be avoided if a proper heavy equipment safety training program is in place.

Heavy equipment safety training is taught at all Heavy Equipment training schools, but it also needs to be performed at the company level on a regular basis. The importance of heavy equipment safety cannot be taken lightly. This essential training also needs to be kept interesting to ensure it effectively gets through to operators. No matter the skill level of an operator, heavy equipment safety must be the number one priority on a work site. The alternative can be life taking.

Heavy equipment and the environments they are employed in are, quite honestly, a recipe for disaster if the proper safety methods are not used at all times. For this reason, training – and more specifically, safety training – is essential for all heavy equipment operators. Unlike many professions, a heavy equipment operator must keep up to date and pay special attention to safety training as they are in a position to badly hurt or even kill themselves or a coworker. The title of Heavy Equipment Operator comes with a great deal of responsibility; a laborer can get away with fooling around and horseplay on the job site, but the heavy equipment operator must be responsible for the safety of all of those who come in close contact with his or her equipment.

Many people feel that regular training is a waste of time and boring, but it is a mandatory mechanism to ensure all workers on a job site are safe. Repetition of training assures that workers treat safety as second nature; safety on the job site is everyone’s responsibility and training assures this. Regularly scheduled safety training ensures that heavy equipment operators do not become complacent. It is easy to forget the importance of safety if we are not reminded on a regular basis.

Many workers make the mistake of “just going through the motions,” but this can lead to accidents and injuries occurring on the job site, or worse happening to the operator or his coworkers. The best remedy for complacency is to keep oneself educated regarding the safety issues and trends that are currently relevant in the workplace.

We often talk about grader operators and the need for accuracy in the work they do, however, they are not the only operators that need to work with accuracy. In fact, almost every piece of heavy equipment has a role that requires accuracy. Excavator operators are often under more pressure than most other operators; but then, they are venturing into delicate territory.

There has been a real push over the last decade to bury services. When you consider those services, there is electricity, gas, telephone, cable TV, and the latest – fiber optic cable. One false move by an operator and you have a gas leak, or the operator is being zapped by thousands of volts. Even worse, everyone loses power, or loses their internet connections and telephone. For the excavator operator, they only need to be out by an inch, and there’s problems.

Fortunately, most excavator operators are well trained so we rarely hear of incidents – and when we do, they are often big incidents. The key to working to precise measurements comes from the original training. Part of that training often includes learning to read site plans. It also includes heavy equipment safety training. In the past, the operator’s mantra was always ‘look up first’ – this was in reference to overhead power cables. Now, it also applies to ‘look below’.

It doesn’t matter what type of heavy equipment you are operating, safety is always going to be an issue. For some operators, such as excavator and backhoe operators, digging in areas where underground services are located is always going to be a tricky and delicate operation. When working under pressure in these situations, a cool head on the shoulders of a well-trained operator will always win through. Can you handle that pressure? Do you have a cool head? If so, have you considered a career as a heavy equipment operator?

It’s rather sad to read online newspapers sometimes, especially when you work in the field of heavy equipment training. One of the core areas of heavy equipment training is safety, and it’s easy to see why given some of these stories. To see these headlines, you would think that backhoe operations were extremely dangerous, yet in reality, operating a backhoe should be a very safe occupation. Some of the headlines from the past month include:

• Man Killed After His Backhoe Tips Over
• Orangeville Man Killed By Backhoe
• 6-Year-Old Girl Injured While Playing With Backhoe
• Gas Line Explosion In Lake Worth After Backhoe Incident
• Backhoe Gets Stuck In Mass. Ave. Tunnel

With the exception of the last news article, taking a little more care may have prevented these accidents. When a child is injured, the first question raised is related to how secure the operator had left his equipment while unattended. Severing a gas line is a team problem – someone should have had maps of the services to they could avoid any underground problems. The last point, while not a problem caused by the backhoe operator, is still an example of what can go wrong.

Undertaking heavy equipment training can help you to avoid many of these incidents, simply through the safety training that is now incorporated in that training. Safety should always be on the mind of a heavy equipment operator. Working safely in the work place demands attention to everything both in the cab and on the ground around you. Backhoes are generally very safe vehicles to operate, however, if you don’t have that safety training, you won’t know how to stay safe.

There are several factors that need to come together that will ensure you have a long and happy heavy equipment operator career. The first of these factors is you. How keen are you to really work in this industry? If you are keen, then the rest can be fairly easy to work on. The second most important factor is your training.

Training to become a heavy equipment operator needn’t be long. Your training should provide you with a good grounding in heavy equipment operations along with workplace safety obligations. Your training should combine in-class training and actual hands-on operator training. Heavy equipment operations is one of those careers where you improve with experience – provided you have the good grounding to begin with. ATS Heavy Equipment Training Schools has developed a good reputation for providing industry with graduates who have that good grounding – there are thousands of successful heavy equipment operators now working successfully following our training.

The third leg of a successful career as a heavy equipment operator is just as important as the first two. That third leg is your first job. After graduating from your training school, you need to find employment that you are going to enjoy, employment that will allow you to continue learning, and an employer that understands you’re a rookie, someone who needs to find their feet in their new career.

We can never promise to find you employment. No one can – at least, not the ‘perfect’ job. We do have a specialized department, our career services department, whose only aim is to help you find that first job. We work with you to sift through all the potential employers in your region to find those that are best suited to you. More importantly, we have worked with many of these employers for a long time. They understand the difficulties that new graduates face, and often work with them to develop their new skills.

To become a successful heavy equipment operator, you need commitment on your part, training that provides a good grounding (and we provide that), and a good job to get you started – and together, we can work on that. You too can join the thousands of successful graduates who have entered the workforce through our training – you just need that commitment.

Some people like to grumble about the classroom side of heavy equipment training. I can understand that students want to spend as much time as possible behind the controls gaining experience. However, there are some issues that require classroom time, and heavy equipment safety is one of those issues.

If you have any doubts about the importance of heavy equipment safety, there are two avenues worth looking at. The first are the requirements set down by federal and state legislators. Safety in the workplace has become a real political issue and the end result is fairly tough requirements for employers. That leads us to the second avenue that you can check – the job descriptions for heavy equipment operators.

Here are some examples of what one employer (City of Duluth MN) has including in one of their job descriptions:

I have been picky in that list since the job requirements run to two pages. However, you can see the importance of safety particularly in the last point. This requires employees to not only work in a safe manner, but to also have knowledge of the safety laws and regulations as they apply to their work.

If you are considering undertaking heavy equipment training, be sure to ask about the safety component before signing on the dotted line. State and federal governments expect safe work places. Employers know that unsafe work practices will result in big fines. Therefore, they generally only recruit employees who can demonstrate heavy equipment safety knowledge so the only path worth taking is training that includes a thorough look at heavy equipment safety.

Our society has become far more sophisticated over the last fifty years and this is reflected in the way employers recruit personnel for their workplaces. Governments are also legislating to make some employment criteria compulsory for employers. If you add to this the pressure that comes from other interests such as insurance bodies, employers have had to refine how and who they recruit. This has been particularly evident in the construction industry, especially when it comes to areas such as heavy equipment operations.

Today, when an employer requires operators for their heavy equipment, they have a list of requirements that job seeker must meet before their application is even considered. Some of these requirements include:

• Proof that the applicant can operate heavy equipment
• Proof that the applicant has completed safety training
• Proof that the applicant has completed heavy equipment training

There is one word that stand out in that list – proof. For experienced heavy equipment operators, they can point to previous employers and an employment history to prove their abilities. For new entrants into the industry, they require documentation from a training organization.

If the job applicant has received their training through a well recognized professional training organization, the employer is quite likely to at least consider that person’s application. If the job applicant comes to them without any proof of their abilities, the employer will most likely reject the application without a second look.

While there are a lot of vacancies for heavy equipment operators, that doesn’t mean employers are becoming desperate to fill them. The last thing any employer needs in today’s economy is a large lawsuit after an incident that claims, amongst other things, that they were negligent when employing poorly trained heavy equipment operators. If safety training is missing, then there could be legal ramifications under state or federal law as well.

Professional heavy equipment training will ensure that your job application is at least looked at. The better credentialed that training body is, the more likely you are to land that job. If you’re considering undertaking heavy equipment training, be sure your training provider is well respected and that their training is comprehensive – your future career could depend on it.

Winter brings many difficulties, especially in areas that receive heavy frosts and icy overnight conditions. The ground can freeze, water can freeze and rupture water tanks, and equipment can be damaged, making it dangerous. Before starting work each day, a heavy equipment operator’s first task is to give his equipment a full inspection, especially in areas where icy temperatures may cause damages.

We’re pretty smart these days. We put antifreeze in products that may be affected by cold temperatures, however, it is the hoses and pipes that often suffer the most. Start a vehicle and send hot liquids through hoses or pipes that are still very cold and you run the risk of having them rupture. Icy temperatures also cause materials to shrink. This constant shrinking and expanding over winter can create stress fractures in some materials, again causing problems during operations.

While heavy equipment safety is centered on the equipment’s safe use, maintenance does also play a serious role. Start-up and shut-down inspections are important at all times of the year, however, winter does bring its own hazards. Many years ago, operators learned their craft by watching their father or a friend operate their equipment. If they were lucky, they also got to ‘have a play’ during lunch breaks or at the end of the day. That taught people how to operate their equipment, but it failed to teach many of the important safety aspects.

Today, if you want to work as a heavy equipment operator, you require professional training that includes heavy equipment safety training. Heavy equipment in the wrong hands can be very dangerous and we have seen over the years a lot of accidents that have caused serious harm. If you are looking for a career as a heavy equipment operator, make sure your training has the proper focus on heavy equipment safety.

Graders are perhaps the gentle giants of the heavy equipment industry. It’s not brute strength that gets the job done with a grader; it’s finesse. Their role is to do the final sculpting of a surface, particularly when it comes to road building. You can often see them working up and down a stretch of new road and they seem to be moving a tiny amount of material. Like a good sculptor, it is those small amounts that make a huge difference to the finished surface.

Learning to become a grader operator is actually quite easy. Like many professions, the finer points of the operating a grader can only come with experience and to be truly proficient, you need to base that experience on a solid training foundation. When it comes to training, you can watch someone else then copy their bad habits; you can get big dollars for training from an unqualified or non-accredited trainer; or you can find a local training company that is accredited as a heavy equipment training business; and that delivers training that has been accredited to national standards.

Now consider who you would employ if you were in the construction business. I don’t think I need to say any more. Accredited training is now a must when it comes to heavy equipment. In some states, you cannot work on a site without at least the safety component on this training. When searching for a training company to undertake grader training, look for a business like ATS.

At ATS Heavy Equipment Training Schools we make grader operator training easy. In fact, along the way you will pick up skills and knowledge on a variety of heavy equipment – this gives you a wider range of equipment to work on after training. Our heavy equipment training programs run for three weeks and include in-class and behind-the-controls training. We also include safety components as required by many states. In fact, our training is accredited to national standards. This means your skills are going to be recognized nationwide. Grader operator training – do you want the easy way or the hard way?

Part of any heavy equipment training program is learning how to communicate and that holds true for excavator training as well. A construction site is a hectic and generally very noisy environment. Operators often need to communicate with other members of their word team and simply yelling won’t cut it – no one will hear you.

Take the situation where an excavator is working to cut away a trench. As the excavator digs, the operator manipulates the bucket so that they can dump the load directly into the back of a dump truck. Easy you may think – and it is, if you know what you are doing and if the truck driver knows what you are doing.

The dump truck will need to reverse to the right position. When in position, the excavator operator signals the truck driver to stop using his horn. Likewise, once the truck is full, the excavator operator will again use his horn to tell the driver to leave. Does each press of the horn mean the same? Not always. There is generally a system in place where one, two or three presses of the horn button have different meanings. Likewise, a long press and a short press.

All heavy equipment operators learn to communicate. There are sounds using the horn and hand signals that may be used by those at ground level. These are all part of a work site’s safety regime that ensures that all operators can communicate where necessary despite all the noise around them.

ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Schools can have you trained and ready to work as an excavator operator in as little as three weeks. Take the first step to becoming an excavator operator by contacting us for more information on your heavy equipment training options.