One of the most versatile machines on any work site is the backhoe. If you look at it, it resembles a huge metal spider. But I’ve never met anyone who knew how to operate a backhoe who didn’t also enjoy operating one. Here are five ways you can use a backhoe to get the job done.

1. Dig a Trench – Backhoes have a bucket on one end that is perfect for digging. You stick the teeth into the ground and dig up the dirt. You can maneuver your backhoe down a line to build a trench for piping.
2. Uproot a Tree – If you’ve never seen anyone pull up a tree before with a backhoe, you’re missing a sweet treat for your eyes. It’s even more fun to be the one operating the backhoe.
3. Grade a Road – There is a plow on the opposite end from the bucket. Just by pushing that plow along an even plane on a road, you can grade it, make it smooth, and put a smile on a lot of auto drivers’ faces.
4. Push Dirt – Just about every worksite has a need for dirt to be pushed out of the way. After digging, the dirt usually piles up. Then you have to push it aside to carry on with the rest of the job. You can use your plow to push the dirt.
5. Plow Snow – Backhoes are also good for plowing snow. Just take that plow and clear the roads.

What can you think of to do with a backhoe?

Bulldozer training is one of the most important things you can do for your career. If you want a long and successful career as a heavy equipment operator, then the bulldozer is one of the essential pieces of machinery to learn how to handle.

So what do you learn in bulldozer training?

10 Types of Equipment You’ll Learn to Operate

At ATS Heavy Equipment School, we take training on all types of heavy equipment real seriously. That’s why we incorporate training for all of these pieces of machinery into the bulldozer training we offer:

• Bulldozers (obviously)
• Backhoes
• Excavators
• Front End Loaders
• Skid Steer Loaders
• Wheel Loaders
• Scrapers
• Graders
• All-Terrain Forklifts
• Off-Road Haul Trucks

When you graduate our bulldozer training classes, you’ll be fully versed in how to operate each piece of equipment, and that includes the proper safety procedures for operations on the work site.

You’ll Also Learn the Basic Operations of Work Site Maintenance

Of course, there is a lot more to handling heavy equipment than simply maneuvering and safety. On the work site, you’ll need to understand a few other things in order to be effective in bulldozer operations. Our instructors will also teach you:

• How to read grades
• Identifying soil
• Determining work site layout
• Worksite safety procedures
• Heavy equipment maintenance
• Laser levels

These skills will come in handy when and if you ever advance to management or take on a supervisory role on the work site (and we hope you do). With these skills, you’ll learn to operate and grow to become a productive contributor to any heavy equipment work site.

One of the best things you can do to be the person who stays employed is — drum roll, please — being the person who can do the job. In the skilled trades industries, that usually means being the person who has the experience, skills, and certifications to do that job. Most of the time that job will involve the ability to operate some type of equipment. The category of “heavy equipment” is pretty big, so a heavy equipment operator who wants to stay employed will try to get experience in many types of equipment.

Good Heavy Equipment Operator Training Involves Variety

One of the things you will notice about the ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Training School is the list of things students learn to operate:

• Backhoes
• Scrapers
• Bulldozers
• Graders
• Skid Steer Loaders
• Wheel Loaders
• Excavators
• Off-Road Haul Trucks
• Front End Loaders
• All-Terrain Forklifts

The reason so many types of equipment are part of the training is that a job site often will have a variety of machines to do the job. An operator who has the skills and certifications to operate more machines is a more valuable employee. ATS students don’t just learn to operate equipment, they also learn to read grades, identify soil, understand site layout and laser levels, and all the basic skills they will need. Heavy equipment maintenance and safety procedures are part of the training, too.

These basic things are going to be needed no matter which piece of equipment you end up on for the day, so everybody who is on the site should know them. But the operator who can do whatever is needed on the heavy equipment they have is going to be the operator who stays on the job when others are laid off.

According to the Occupational Outlook Handbook of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Construction Equipment Operators are predicted to see an increase of 19% in their job outlook — that’s more than the average (11%), and this prediction goes from 2012 to 2022. Why such a difference?

Heavy Equipment Jobs Stay In The Area

You can’t import a ditch already dug or a pipeline already laid. It’s impossible to outsource road or home construction because these things have to be done on the site. Somebody working in a call center might see their job go overseas — somebody needing a crane or backhoe has to find a person to operate that equipment where the job site is located, right here in this country.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t lots of opportunities for heavy equipment operators to find work in other countries if they want it. It does mean the operator goes where the work is and the work is tied to the location.

The More Equipment You Can Run, The More Jobs You Can Do

The ATS Advantage is that students and graduates get more than exposure to a variety of equipment that enables flexibility on the job. That flexibility is good, but the great news is that the training is the best and it comes with financial assistance, housing, and lifetime employment assistance.

Since ATS has successfully trained thousands of graduates in heavy equipment operation, mobile crane operation, and Class-A CDL driving, there is an abundance of experience to share. There are many types of equipment that students are exposed to because in real life you will encounter that variety.

The lifetime assistance in employment gives flexibility too — if the job market dries up where you are at, you always have help finding something new in our comprehensive job database.

It’s Freezing Outside

Brrrrrr…..it’s getting colder! Freezing!! Most heavy equipment operators don’t have the luxury of putting their equipment in a heated location overnight, so when you come to work in the morning, that equipment is really cold. So cold, in fact, that things can change in the way that the machinery works. Here are three things to watch out for:

• frozen pipelines — particularly hydraulics
• metal stress — hairline cracks develop in grader blades or teeth on excavator buckets
• ice — steps and handles can be dangerously slippery

Learn How To Handle Freezing Hazards Before You Start

When you get your training at ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Training School, one of the things covered in the pre-start-up check. This foundational step is essential all year long, but in the winter it’s even more important. Learning how to look for problems like frozen pipelines, metal stress, and ice is one thing — learning how to deal with those problems is even better.

Every class and training session is designed to make students ready to work as professionals in the skilled trades industries. Professionals know how to avoid hazards through proper maintenance and thorough inspections. Heavy equipment works all year long, and in the frozen winter months, there are many heavy equipment operators staying safe because they stay on top of what’s happening overnight.

Knowing what to look for in freezing hazards and what to do when you find it make the difference between a heavy equipment operator with a big problem in their machine and a heavy equipment operator with a big paycheck.

On February 15, 1854, an engineering marvel was opened: The Horseshoe Curve in the Allegheny Mountains of Pennsylvania. This piece of railroad track meant that travelers between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh could make the trip entirely by rail in about 15 hours. That was a big improvement from the 4 days of canal & train the trip involved in previous years.

Here are the statistics:

• length of the curve — 2375 feet
• the degree of curvature — 9 degrees; 25 minutes; the central angle is 220 degrees
• elevation of the lower east end — 1594 feet
• elevation of the upper west end — 1716 feet
• total elevation climb — 122 feet
• grade — 1.8% (1.8 foot rise per 100 feet)

And what kind of heavy equipment did they use to do this excavating? Men with hand tools. About 450 workers, many from Ireland, were paid 25 cents per hour and worked 12 hour days to carve out the mountain at Kittanning Point and get the railroad through. That was some serious shovel work for 3 dollars a day.

Today The Job Market Is Different

The maps on the ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Training School listing recent wage guidelines for skilled operators list 2011 wages going from entry-level $12.85 an hour up to $24.57 an hour for specialty industries.

The job is more complicated than excavating with a shovel alone and the work goes much faster with the machinery doing the excavating. But the skill of the worker still has to be there, and the satisfaction of seeing a permanent benefit from your hard work might be just the same as those guys leaning on their shovels looking at the work they did on Horseshoe Curve.

If you spend any time at all on heavy equipment operator forums, you’ll see someone mention that “you need a bubble in your butt” to be a successful operator of machines like excavators, backhoes, and anything that is used on uneven sites. What are they talking about?

The Ability To Know You Are Level

One of the basic tools in most toolboxes is a level. These essential tools are useful for anything that needs to be accurately level, and before there were apps, these levels used a bubble of air in a colored liquid inside a tube of glass with lines on it. You lined up the bubble with the lines by moving the thing you were leveling. Since the bubble doesn’t actually move because it’s a bubble of air and stays on top of the water, it acts as a focal point to orient things around.

Levels with bubbles are used to park RVs level so the refrigerator runs right, and to make sure concrete is level so the building isn’t crooked. You will see levels with bubbles used in a lot of different industries because it’s a simple, accurate way to ensure leveling perfection. And the bubble in the butt of the heavy equipment operator is the instinctive leveling tool that senses when you are operating on a slope.

Seat-of-the-Pants Training

One of the biggest reasons ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Training School insists on seat-of-the-pants experience during the training process is that you can’t exactly teach how to sense when the machine is level. It has to be experienced, learning how to sense what is going on around you and safely making mistakes so you can see when you are not level.

The best heavy equipment operations programs provide on-the-seat training with a variety of machinery along with the knowledge to become competent and professional. The “bubble in your butt” is a good thing because it means you have one of the most basic skills needed to do your job.

If you go to one of the antique tractor shows popular in rural areas, you will see many things. There may be a tractor pull, where operators compete to get increasingly heavy loads across the ground. It’s likely there will be some kind of food, probably a local favorite, and certainly tasty. There may be categories of equipment, grouped by type or by the manufacturer.

And you probably will see many pieces of heavy equipment that once were the latest and greatest and now are curiosities.

So if you are thinking that heavy equipment will be obsolete someday, you are right in one way. It’s certain that a particular type of machinery will become outdated as technology changes. But if you are thinking that heavy equipment will be obsolete someday as a category of machinery, you couldn’t be more wrong.

There Will Always Be A Need For Heavy Equipment

There are always jobs that require large machinery to accomplish. A heavy equipment operator may have to learn how to operate the new machine, but a good operator can easily figure it out. It’s just like the difference in driving when you get behind the wheel of a brand new car.

Particular models of heavy equipment will certainly eventually be obsolete, but the need for some type of heavy equipment will always be there. That’s why ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Training School makes sure students get experience in as many types of big machines as possible. When you are a little familiar with different kinds of equipment, you can figure it out if you have to operate something new the boss just bought.

There’s a good reason why Associated Training Services deliberately gets our students on several different kinds of heavy equipment during training. We’ve seen that your ability to operate one kind of big machine doesn’t necessarily mean you can jump on another and know how to use it safely.

Since most heavy equipment operators will be on a job with several types of equipment, there’s always a chance you could be asked to run something you don’t usually operate. If you have at least been exposed to it during training, you’ll have a better idea of how to do it. During training, you’ll be on many different machines:

• Backhoes
• Scrapers
• Bulldozers
• Graders
• Skid Steer Loaders
• Wheel Loaders
• Excavators
• Off-Road Haul Trucks
• Front End Loaders
• All-Terrain Forklifts

Each one has a different function and operates with slightly different controls because of that function. This isn’t like going from a sedan to an SUV, and the stakes are much higher. The more familiar you are with different machinery, the more valuable you are as an employee because you can be trusted with incredibly expensive equipment.

There’s another reason why we expose students to different types of heavy equipment during training; you get an idea of what you like and don’t like to run. If you know for sure that you love using a backhoe but hate using a forklift, that’s good to know before applying for a job that requires you to be the main forklift operator.

ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Training School has been putting people and machines together successfully for a long time — all kinds of people, and all kinds of heavy equipment.

One of the nice things about coming to ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Training School is knowing the whole hassle of housing has already been solved. We offer housing assistance at the ATS dormitory, a nice place only four miles away, and the cost of your stay can be included in your financial package.

This means you have a comfortable room where you can kick back and go over that day’s classes, with a small refrigerator in the room for drinks and snacks. There are laundry facilities and a game room, too. It’s a good way to get to know your classmates. You aren’t far from stores and restaurants in nearby Madison, and the entire setup has proven to be one of our students appreciate.

Housing assistance is included in your training because it gives you the chance to get away from your regular life and focus on what you are there to do: become a professional heavy equipment operator who is competent and knowledgeable. You can’t do that with half your attention on the things that fill your day now. You also can’t do that if the place you are staying is far away or uncomfortable.

Dormitory

The dormitory will be contacted when you sign up for classes, and a room will automatically be reserved for you. You don’t have to figure out the best place to stay because we already did. All you need to do is learn how to do the job you want to apply for when you graduate.