Road Graders Opening The Doors To Non Traditional Workers

Road graders have long been a bastion of male dominance. While women have found their way into truck driving and bulldozer operations, they haven’t shown much interest in graders. That, however, seems to be changing quite quickly. In fact, women are looking at all forms of heavy equipment now and the technical challenge of graders is becoming appealing.

Are employers ready to take on female grader operators? It appears so. Of course, equal opportunity is playing a big role, but skills are still the determining factor. These days it doesn’t matter who you are or what your background is, if you can demonstrate the skills required then you have an equal chance of landing that job. Modern machinery is one of the biggest factors in helping nontraditional workers enter the heavy equipment field.

Today’s heavy equipment relies less on the strength of the operator and more on their ability to coordinate their feet and hands. Power steering, for example, has made the operation of this equipment fingertip easy. Controls on many units of heavy equipment are similar to joysticks found with computer gaming machines – just a little heavier and more intuitive.

A sure sign that industry is more accepting of women in their ranks is to look at some of the heavy equipment training schools. In the past, you may have found one or two women attending these schools each year. Now you can often find one or two attending each time a course is conducted. ATS Heavy Equipment Training Schools doesn’t discriminate in any fashion. If you have what it takes to become a grader operator, or any other unit of heavy equipment, then we are there ready to train you and to help you gain a start in your new career.

While operating a grader is not quite child’s play, it’s certainly achievable for most adults no matter what gender or background. If you want to find out more about heavy equipment careers, contact us and we’ll be happy to discuss your training options.