Equipment You Will Learn to Operate

A backhoe, also called a rear actor or back actor, is a piece of excavating equipment or digger consisting of a digging bucket on the end of a two-part articulated arm. They are typically mounted on the back of a tractor or front loader. The section of the arm closest to the vehicle is known as the boom, and the section which carries the bucket is known as the dipper or dipperstick (the terms 'boom' and 'dipper' having been used previously on steam shovels). More...

A dump truck or production truck is a truck used for transporting loose material (such as sand, gravel, or dirt) for construction. A typical dump truck is equipped with a hydraulically operated open-box bed hinged at the rear, the front of which can be lifted up to allow the contents to be deposited on the ground behind the truck at the site of delivery. More...

An excavator is an engineering vehicle consisting of an articulated arm (boom, stick), bucket and cab mounted on a pivot (a rotating platform, like a Lazy Susan) atop an undercarriage with tracks or wheels. Their design is a natural progression from the steam shovel. More...

A grader, also commonly referred to as a road grader, a blade, a maintainer, or a motor grader, is an engineering vehicle with a long blade used to create a flat surface. Typical models have three axles, with the engine and cab situated above the rear axles at one end of the vehicle and a third axle at the front end of the vehicle, with the blade in between. More...

A loader is an engineering vehicle (often used in construction) that is primarily used to "load" material (asphalt, demolition debris, dirt, feed, gravel, logs, raw minerals, recycled material, rock, sand, wood chips, etc.) into or onto another type of machinery (dump truck, conveyor belt, feed-hopper, rail-car, etc.). More...

A bulldozer is a crawler (caterpillar tracked tractor), equipped with a substantial metal plate (known as a blade), used to push large quantities of soil, sand, rubble, etc., during construction work. The term "bulldozer" is often used to mean any heavy engineering vehicle (sometimes a loader and sometimes an excavator), but precisely, the term refers only to a tractor (usually tracked) fitted with a dozer blade or bucket. More...

 Skid Steer

Skid Steers gat their name because of how they manuever. As they turn one side advances while the other skids. Thus turning the vehicle much like a tractor except it has wheels instead if tracks. The design allows it to be compact and versatile in its applications. More...