The Army 21 Echo MOS is also called the Heavy Equipment Construction operator specialty. There are a lot of different projects going on at Army bases and facilities that need the use of heavy construction equipment. Once in a while the Army contracts out this work, but it prefers to have its own heavy equipment operators. The Army works in building and maintaining dams, roads, airfields, and preparing sites for new construction as well. Heavy Equipment Construction operators are an important link in the chain for the Army. Without them much of the work that the Army does that is central to its mission would not be done.
As an Army Heavy Equipment Construction operator you will be required to use graders, cranes, bulldozers, tractors, and other huge pieces of equipment to do specific tasks. It takes moving tons of earth to create many of the projects that the Army is involved in, and the Army will train you in how to do this in a swift and efficient way as a Heavy Equipment Construction operator. Heavy Equipment Construction operators are responsible for using wheeled equipment with attachments such as bulldozer attachments; motorized graders and leveling equipment, and self propelled or towed other attachments.
Your duties may include:
-Spreading and cutting fill materials with a scraper.
-Transporting heavy equipment with a tractor-trailer rig.
-Digging various trenches and holes using power mechanical equipment.
-Driving road graders, bulldozers, and various other heavy construction equipment.
-Excavating, backfilling, grubbing, stripping, clearing and pushing earth and material with a crawler or bulldozer.
-Assisting combat engineers with their Army missions.
-Interpreting grade stakes and following precise directions.
-Cutting and leveling runways with various heavy equipment.
-Moving and lifting various material using cranes, hoists, lifts and other heavy equipment.
Depending on your particular specialty within the heavy equipment operator MOS you will have anywhere from 4 – 12 weeks of individual advanced training following basic Training.
You will learn basic soldiering skills during your 9 weeks of basic training, and then it’s off to formal Heavy Equipment operator school. You will often be assigned a command and report in right after Heavy equipment school. You could literally be stationed anyplace that the Army has a project going on. More than some specialties, a person who is in a Heavy Equipment Operator MOS may find that they have an opportunity to travel, as anyplace that a need for a heavy equipment operator exists is a potential duty station for you.
