The question often comes up about types of equipment you’ll be on at ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Training School. The answer is: lots. We make sure you get familiar with all the machines on this list:

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

The reason why we’ve found it’s important to give students lots of exposure to different kinds of machinery is that the same question can be asked about your job once you graduate. Heavy equipment is a big investment so most employers have a wide range of machines in their business.

Your employer might have a skid steer loader or a wheel loader. Maybe even both, from different decades. You might be using a brand new front end loader or a backhoe about to be retired. There’s no real way to know, so the best preparation is learning how to figure out what to do with whatever you are asked to operate.

If you are familiar with the way a lot of different equipment works and have a grasp of essential safety skills, you are in good shape. It helps to know how to identify soils, read grade and site layout, and use a laser level. The bigger your perspective is when you start a job, the easier it is to see why you are important on the work site.

Classes start every three weeks and there’s no waiting list. We set it up like that to fit the real world and real people’s schedules. Take a look at what ATS can help you learn, and you’ll be on the equipment you know how to run.

On the job, the most versatile person is apt to be the one who stays on the payroll, right? It doesn’t matter what kind of job you are talking about either, because the principle applies to every industry, white or blue collar. In the heavy equipment field, that versatility looks like an operator who is familiar with many kinds of machines and able to figure out what to do with them to get the job done.

ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Training School has the goal of equipping graduates to be versatile operators able to do what has to be done and do it professionally. That means our students get hands-on training on different types of machinery and become familiar with the big picture of heavy equipment. It also means they learn how to learn, because there will be new stuff thrown at us on the job.

The chance to get a CDL license is offered, too, so you can drive trucks — that is something most heavy equipment operators find they need when they enter the workforce. A lot of heavy equipment gets loaded and moved on a flatbed, so if the operator can be the truck driver, too, that operator is the person who gets hired.

If an employer is trying to decide who to hire, or who to keep on the payroll, the person with the safety certifications, CDL, ability to learn, and versatility is going to be the more valuable employee every time. That’s the goal of ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Training, and that’s why our graduates get hired.

Hurricanes, tornadoes, fire, flood, and more, are all disasters that leave piles of wreckage in their wake. No matter what the disaster is, it usually takes a heavy equipment operator to clean it up successfully. But doing this important service is a dangerous task for those who go into the chaos to bring order and restore normal life. Disaster recovery workers are exposed to many hazards on this kind of job site.

OSHA has an excellent resource for disaster recovery workers who are operating heavy equipment in their Hurricane eMatrix guide. It’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with what happens in cleanup because the rules can change drastically. All the normal work site procedures may no longer be in place because this kind of work site is unpredictable. As recovery workers slowly bring restoration safety measures are established, but the first guys into the scene have to be able to respond to whatever they find.

The more experienced a heavy equipment operator is, the better that operator can do the job in disaster recovery since the site is the only thing that’s unfamiliar. All kinds of machinery is used in cleanup, and the need for experienced operators is always there. If you think you are interested in helping after the next disaster, the best way to prepare is by getting good at your job and familiar with the OSHA guidelines. That way you are ready to go.

Training is the foundation for your experience in operating heavy equipment. ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Training School provides that training with expert, professional standards that include time in the classroom and time in the seat of many kinds of heavy equipment. You get the certification and the training to start a career as a heavy equipment operator anywhere, even a disaster site.

Some folks have been playing video games where they “operate” heavy equipment to build their own house or create a town. Others point to actual high-tech simulators built by manufacturers of heavy equipment for training purposes and wonder if it’s the same thing as the video game, only more expensive. Then there’s the old-fashioned guys saying, “ya gotta learn it by the seat of yer pants or it ain’t gonna work.”

The truth about simulators?

Well, a video game is going to be like a video game. You will get some head knowledge if it is created to be educational, and it has a value in that way. It’s also fun. If you like big machinery of course a game where you use it will be fun. But it won’t give you a sense of what you are actually doing when you get in the seat of that grader or backhoe.

Simulators built by the manufacturer are designed for training to use a specific type of equipment. You will be sitting at controls like the crane or whatever and be looking at a screen that shows you the effects of what you are doing with those controls. Some even will have a few effects like seat tilting. They are not designed to be entertainment; they are designed to be a safe and effective way to begin the training process so your mistakes don’t have real-life consequences.

In-the-seat training is best done after you have a good idea of what you are doing, just like it’s a good idea to know a lot about driving before you get on the road. And, like driving a car, you develop reactions that become automatic as you spend time in real life doing it. It takes time and experience out in the weather, in the seat, to really get the hang of operating heavy equipment.

At ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Training School, we make sure you are ready to be in the seat before you are expected to operate big machinery. Then you get that in-the-seat experience which only comes from operating many kinds of machinery in real life, and that gets you trained and certified to be a valuable employee worth hiring.

Technically, you do not need a Commercial Drivers License (CDL) to operate heavy equipment, it’s true. But if you have your CDL, you are going to be much more valuable to an employer, and it can make the difference between getting hired or getting a raise or staying home looking for work that pays the bills. Because of this, ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Training School includes short-term truck driver training for those who want to take their career to this higher level.

Driving a tractor-trailer to move heavy equipment to the next job site is necessary with anything that uses tracks instead of wheels. This equipment is slow, heavy, and often wide. To take it down the road would tie up traffic and probably mess up the surface. So a flatbed or lowboy trailer is used; the equipment is driven up a ramp, tied down, and moved by towing the trailer. If you can show a CDL and a training certificate from ATS (a respected school in this business), you are ahead of the rest.

In four weeks at the most, you will be prepared to take the CDL road test. You’ll know Department of Transportation rules & regulations, how to drive heavy equipment on roads, how to back heavy equipment, coupling, uncoupling, pre-trip inspections, and all the rest. ATS started out in truck driver training, so we know the value of this skill.

Employers know that value too and are willing to pay more for an employee who can operate heavy equipment plus drive any of the trucks that may be needed to transport it. The more skills you have, the more valuable you are as an employee. Check into our CDL Truck Driving Program and see how you can be the one who gets the job because you have the right training.

Heavy equipment moves mountains — and even though the bulldozers, scrapers, and other machines are made of strong metals, they use a network of hardfacing material, a wear-resistant layer of metal ridges, to protect the parts that contact the ground. It extends the life of the machine by adding a renewable surface.

Usually, hardfacing, or hard surfacing, is done by welders in patterns or ridges to reduce the weight, save money, and save time. Typically a welder lays down lines two beads wide and one bead high — about 0.25 inches by 0.125 inches. Covering the surface instead of these lines would certainly be good protection, but that would also be overkill. There’s a couple of different techniques, depending on the type of soil being worked.

Loamy soils, which are softer, generally will benefit from a grid pattern that traps the soil on the surface of the metal and protects it from abrasion. Usually, a good welder will lay down parallel ridges about 2 inches apart and at a ninety-degree angle. Rockier soils are different because you don’t want the rocks moving over the steel surface. In those cases, a welder will lay down a hardfacing that creates a flow of soil over the top of the pattern, like rails or even dots.

When you train at ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Training School, you learn a lot about heavy equipment, including the maintenance that goes into keeping it in top working condition. As the industry changes, the technologies change, but the job stays the same: you are operating the machines that move mountains.

Have you seen that reality TV show, Railroad Alaska? Anyone interested in heavy equipment will be fascinated by the portrayal of all the big machines that are needed to keep the railroad functional. And it’s true that for many folks, the railroad is the lifeline of communication through the wilderness. Of course, the directors seem to think that “human drama” is what sells the show, but I bet a lot of viewers watch because they love watching big machinery get a job done right. Who wouldn’t want to watch a cannon blast an avalanche loose so the excavator can move it off the tracks?

The show demonstrates something that many often miss; it takes a lot of different types of machinery to do things. In this case, a railroad is more than trains. Businesses often rely on more types of heavy equipment than most people realize.  This is why ATS offers Specialized Training.

We can come to your site or you can come to our training site and get training, testing, qualification, certification, and even licensing in the exact area it needed for the equipment you use. It will be OSHA compliant and meet NCCCO and NCCER standards. We know the industry because we’ve been in operation since 1959, but we haven’t stagnated. We’ve strengthened.

Customized training and specialized curricula are part of our strengths:

• we can train your employees for the work you do with the heavy equipment you use
• we can meet regulatory, insurance, and safety requirements 
• we can help you be productive and profitable

That Railroad Alaska TV show is a showcase for the need to train heavy equipment operators expertly so they can do an important job safely and well. If those guys didn’t know what they were doing, it’d be terrible.

Heavy equipment is a good field to get into; the operation of heavy equipment is essential for laying the foundation of everything that is built on top of it. Without a good foundation, it really doesn’t matter how well a bridge or building is constructed because the shifting base will counteract that construction. Your career should be like that well-built bridge, built on a good foundation. For heavy equipment operation, training is the base of everything.

Build your career on the best foundation in the business, one that has a history you can research and results you can see. Associated Training Services (ATS) has that history and those results. Since 1959, we’ve been family-owned and operated with the motto of Quality, Integrity, & Pride – and that motto is taken seriously. It shows in the results, too — our graduates have been successful operators throughout the years. We have one customer base, our students, and that is who we focus on.

As the industry has changed, the type of operator needed for running the equipment has changed, and so has the training. We’ve kept up with the changes in our curriculum and equipment so our graduates continue to start their careers from the solid foundation they need. Green construction jobs require a workforce trained in new equipment, new initiatives, and new practices. With ATS, we’ve got that covered.

But the foundation is laid with more than hands-on training and knowledge standards. We provide career assistance. Our Career Services Department gives personal career counseling, soft skills training like resume and interview skills, and job leads with an exclusive website our graduates can always come back to.

The ATS foundation is solid – one your heavy equipment career can be built on to last a lifetime.

Since 1959, Associated Training Services (ATS) has been training heavy equipment operators to maneuver and drive equipment on roads and construction sites. We’ve been quite successful. Many of our students have gone on to rewarding careers, which is why we do it.

The ATS founder, Robert Klabacka, wanted to build a family business that helps people. In the family, he is known for many wise words, including:

Find something you love to do, and you’ll never have to work another day in your life.

Robert Klabacka

He proved that by his own life.

ATS has trained people to be crane operators, bulldozer operators, dump truck drivers, riggers and signalpersons, and general heavy equipment operators. With several different training programs, we offer flexibility and affordability. We can even come to your work site and train your employees as a group.

Our specialized training includes mobile crane operations, truck driving, and rigging/signalperson training.

With quality, integrity, and pride, we will take on the task of training one person or a thousand.

Why ATS elected to do employer-specific specialized training because we saw the need in the marketplace – long before anyone else did. Employers need qualified heavy equipment operators who can move between types of equipment with ease and with safety their top priority. So we compiled our years of knowledge and experience on the various heavy equipment and put them all into a specialized training service that works.

When you want the absolute best training possible, pick the pioneers who practically created the industry. We understand heavy equipment training.

Why scrapers are useful heavy equipment to have on a construction site. In many ways, they are more beneficial than bulldozers. A bulldozer has a blade that is useful for pushing dirt or snow for short distances. The problem is, once the blade has pushed its limit, then you’re done. You have to push it to the side and start over. Scrapers don’t have that limitation.

Scrapers have a blade for pushing. On that note, they have something in common with dozers. But where they have the advantage is being able to pick up the load they push and dumping it into a dump truck-like compartment for hauling. Because of this extra capacity, the scraper can push more dirt in a shorter period of time and haul it off to a dumping site. Having one scraper on the construction site eliminates at least two pieces of heavy equipment but more than likely three.

Without a scraper, you’d have to bulldoze the dirt then pick it up with a backhoe and dump it into a dump truck for hauling. You can do all of that with one scraper.

Keep in mind, however, that a scraper does not have a bucket. It has a blade that forces the dirt into the wagon part of the machine. Once the wagon is full, you drive it to the dumping location.

If you want to set yourself apart on the construction site, learn how to operate a scraper. You’ll be a valuable member of the team with a marketable and valuable skill.