Your Path to a Successful Career Starts With Heavy Equipment Operator Training
If you are considering a career in heavy equipment operation, you might be wondering about what kind of value this particular job training might net you. Heavy equipment operation can be an extremely rewarding career. Here are three reasons to start your heavy equipment operator career:
1. Easily Secure Employment
Technicians who complete heavy equipment operator training can choose from all four main categories within the construction industry: residential, commercial, industrial, and infrastructure. When one of these branches might cool down, another tends to warm up, so you and the company you work for will always have a project to work on. It’s also easy to secure full-time employment, which means greater financial stability.
Job security is a major benefit as well, considering that the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) estimates this field will experience an annual growth of 42,300 new jobs. Not only that, but the total population will increase by about 2 million every year, leading to greater demand for housing, which then leads to greater demand for the other branches of the construction industry.
Choosing a heavy equipment operator training program with hands-on training also makes you a better job candidate. Workers with this kind of experience are able to hit the ground running on job sites because they already know how to operate the machines.
2. Traveling Jobs
Have you ever wanted to live in a different part of the country? Do you want to try out a different climate or city to see if you really want to move there? Or maybe you’re just interested in seeing a different region for a while. You can become a traveling heavy equipment operator and go anywhere. Since construction jobs are project-based, there’s plenty of flexibility in deciding where you want to go and how often you want to move.
If you have a specific skill set, you can specialize in different environments, but for the most part, all heavy equipment operator certifications are transferable throughout the United States. Make sure when you look at job boards where the job might be listed—or you can search by location.
You can also obtain a commercial driving license (CDL). With this license, you can operate road-legal machines—usually trucks but there are others that might need to be moved to different locations and projects.
3. Veteran Recognition
In 2022, the number of employed veterans working in the construction industry increased for the second year in a row, to 6.5 percent. Not only does construction offer competitive pay, but there tend to be few educational prerequisites other than training credentials. Some skills and duties required within construction are transferable within all the military branches: good hand-eye coordination, the ability to work within a team, physical stamina, and troubleshooting. In fact, our owner, Jeff Woolever, spent 20 years flying combat patrol and reconnaissance missions in the US Navy.
A heavy equipment operator career might be right for you if these sound like benefits you can get behind. Contact us today to get started.