Hey got a question for everyone on here. How did you guys get started in this field (meaning heavy equipment operations and construction). See here is why i ask I am suppose to go to school in january (had to move it from October to jan due to health problems with my father) and I got to tell you I am having second thoughts all I get when I tell people I know in this field about school is the same thing "you will be school trained not real world trained and no body will hire you they want real world experince". Now xxx I am spending my money to try and learn what I feel is a trade a respectable trade that some day I would like to do on my own some day and all I get is that same responce. Is school the answer or should I just say forget it and try something else, or do like some of the people I know (none from this site) that just try and wing it and say "any one can dig a hole its not that hard" But I feel that is soo wrong it is not even funny. I have been to so many calls with the fd in 9 years envolving people that just decided to "wing It " and hit gas,water,and elec lines cause they never called and had no idea what they where doing. The FD brings up another point I try to get a driving job since I have my cdl b with haz mat and tanker and I get the same responce NO EXPERINCE, well now how the xxxx plain and simple am i suppose to get exp with out the job. I can take my depts 72000 pound 49 ft long tower ladder and drive it around town in and out of traffic and all that fun stuff almost on a daily basis but I can not get a job driving a freaking 22ft box truck cause they do not count fd as experince. Any one have any suggestions ? Sorry I made this so long but I had to vent
get the education. that degree is something that can't be taken away from you. maybe get your degree in const. management. my family has been in the water/sewer biz since 47, and my son is first to have a degree. he has been with me working (summer months) since he was 12-13....he has lots of experience, PLUS, should he tire of working with me, he has other options. he has a lot of office/administrative tools that i don't have and is a wonderful asset to our company. his education has allowed us to expand our business, have MUCH better control of the office end of it.
I'll put .02 in on this one. Pray about it, ask God what your calling is and for some direction and he will provide for you what you are good at. I promise. Just be prepared. It will not go the way you want it to but it will happen. If you want to have your own business, the sky is the limit. I got started by refinancing my house and putting a down payment on a truck and a Trackhoe (Bobcat334), and a trailer. You have to have some builders or somebody to generate some work but if you are good and you can please your customers it will not take long before you will be swamped with work. Be patient. You are going to hit lines even if you spend all day hand digging them. It's gonna happen. But it won't break you unless you rip out a main fiber optic line. Then you may as well keep digging because you will prob be broke after they fix it, j/k. Don't try to get to big unless your resources take you to that other level. Man I wish anybody their own business and not to have to work for "the man", but you do have to answer to your customers. Good Luck with whichever route you take.
If your talking about a Heavy Equipment Operators school, I can definatly give you some insight from my experience. When I graduated high school, I immediatly went into the HEO program at Wilson Tech. I spent 2 years in the program and got certifications in Dozer, Excavator, Loader, and Motor Grader Operation. All were 1 semester long certifications except Motor Grader which was a 2 semester certification. When I told some people what I was doing, most just laughed or shook their head. They too thought it was a waste of time. Well I finished the school and after applying with several companies with no call backs, one of the largest contractors in the area finally hired me. My guess is they hire everybody that comes in the door. I was on the job for 3 days before I ever touched a piece of equipment. Even then it was a sheeps foot roller. I got no respect at all. It didn't matter one bit that I knew I could operate equipment. To them, I was just a 21 year old kid who didn't know nothing. My forman was like 50, and the next person on our crew closest to my age was atleast mid-30's. So I ofcourse was given all the shovel and string line work even though some of the other "operators" made an even bigger mess than there was originaly. Finally one day they needed someone on a D6 to level out dirt piles brought in by dump trucks. That was my big break so to speak. The next day I was sent to another jobsite to load trucks with a 988 rubber tire loader, then to load trucks with a 330 Excavator. Over the next few months I worked for the company, I got more than my fair share of seat time even though most of it was spent on D6 dozers or Pans. My shining moment was a day where we were doing alot of pan work, and the motor grader operator called in sick. We had more than enough operators on the crew to cover all the Pan's and Dozers, so I voluntered to run the 12G grader. They all never thought for a second that a 21 year old could operate that grader. Up until this point, every motor grader operator I had seen with this company was 40+. Finally I got the nod from the foreman to give it a try. I smoothed that haul road like a sheet of glass. I think everyone was suprised. The foreman even asked me later in the day to take the Motor Grader down to where the Pans were dumping and smooth everything up. A few weeks later I even got the chance to make a final grade for stone in a section of a parking lot we were doing on another job.... My point to this novel is that NOTHING compares to the experience you get on the job. BUT I would be nowhere near the operator I am today or be as versitile in the equipment I can operate had it not been for that school.
Stroker, sent you a pm I think. See if it went through.
Must not have gone through....
nope did not get but love the sig funny as hell :bouncegri
Try it again stroker and the sig is halarious.
How did I get started? Well if I can remember back that far I think my father bought me Dump truck and I would spend days out my little world moving dirt from point A to boint B. The next piece of equipment was a shouvel mounted on the back of a truck. Looked like a crane but with a backhoe on it. I was able to dig trenches and shape the area ware I lived and it would lift high enough to load that truck. Those were the days, I didn't have to wory about underground utilitys, because ther were none in the area ware I would work. I didn' need to go get a permit for any new work eather. Had a co worker show up with a grader and offered to grade my rugh cut roads for free just for something to do. Man we were going to change the world. We felt like we could move mountains. We spent what seemed like days and days building what seemed like miles and miles or roads at the time. We had a pit we would haul out of and no one gave us any crap about been overloaded so we had dirt falling over the sids of the truck. Man it sure would have made things go faster if we had another driver and another truck. I think we found a guy with a dozer to work on the other end of the road so it wasn't so rough on the grader at the time. and at about the samd time as the dozer came along the guy with the grader got hold of this gigantic loader. I think it would load the truck with 1 scoop. thus we named it 1 scoop. man that thing was big. The rest is history. I now live in an area that does have underground utilitys and you need a permit to park your equipment at home. my equipment list is up to 7 snow plows, 2 class 8 dump trucks & 1 class 7, 1 TB070 Takuchi excavator. 3 12,000 lb bobcats (1 for parts) 3 street sweepers, a power ram for trenchless road booring, 2 hydroseeders, Austin Western all wheel drive grader, Parking lot striping business w/3 striping machines, 1800 sq ft shop on 1 acre to work on and store my equipment, Royer shreader for procesing topsoil, and latest a Bomag adl100 double roller. I still work mostly alone except for winter when we plow snow. We (we = wife, son and I)now work for what seems like 25 hours a day but enjoy it verry much. our income have gone from peanutbutter sandwich and milk to 300K + a year. I still love the memorys of my first truck and Mom yelling out the kitchen window for little Timmy and me to wash up for lunch.
Back when my brother and I were in grade school we lived with my Mom and Grandmother. There was a section of the backyard where we would play. At times we were known to (manually) dig holes (on, maybe they were pits) that quickly became deeper than we were tall. Since we were never concerned with using proper shoring, it was only a matter of time before my grandmother would come out on the back porch and make us fill it back in before somebody got hurt. Naturally, a few days later we would be back at it. Never did it for any other reason than it was fun. Oh yea, we had all the Tonka stuff too... Joe
dayexco. that's great that your son is going to school but, the things you have taught him he will NEVER learn in school!!!!!