Times Have Changed For Heavy Equipment

Over the last 100 years heavy equipment has slowly evolved from large cumbersome beasts that spent a lot of fuel to move a small amount of dirt to today’s machines that are, by comparison, much smaller and yet capable of moving far more dirt with less effort.

The role of an operator has also changed. 100 years ago you proved your abilities, not with a piece of paper, but by climbing in and doing the job. The hours were long, the work dirty and as an operator, it was brute strength that was required simply to turn the steering wheel. The levers took even more work.

Today, with power assisted steering and feather touch lever control, you can operate your heavy equipment virtually with a single finger.

With the implementation of laser pointing devices, satellite navigation, GPS, and onboard computers, an operator can virtually set the machine to a do a job and sit back go to auto pilot. Perhaps it isn’t quite that easy, but the day is coming. Computers certainly do make life easier now. Heavy equipment operators from the past would not recognize todays machine.

Top operate a piece of heavy equipment now, you need almost as much class room training as behind the wheel. Check out our training at ATS Heavy Equipment Training Schools.