Why Becoming a Heavy Equipment Operator Isn't Worth It Anymore

Why Becoming a Heavy Equipment Operator Isn't Worth It Anymore Before dawn, on the edge of a city still under construction, a single excavator is already running. The engine idles at around seven hundred revolutions per minute. The cab glows from inside. The tracks sit in fresh mud that will be a road, or a foundation, or a parking structure by the end of the month. The machine weighs ninety thousand pounds and cost somewhere north of five hundred thousand dollars new — more capital than most Americans will accumulate across an entire working life. The person operating it earns, on average, around twenty-four dollars an hour.