Keep excavators, dozers and loaders running. Half diesel engine, half hydraulics, and a laptop plugged into a machine the size of a house.
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Pay, the path, pros and cons and the facts on one printable page. Good for a wall or a guidance counsellor.
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What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Median
$65,510
Bottom tenth
$46,820
Top tenth
$94,460
The national median is $65,510 a year, and the bottom tenth start near $46,820. This is straight time. Overtime is normal in this trade and is not in these figures, so what actually lands in your bank account is usually higher than the number above.
$20 to $25 an hour
Apprentice or first-year technician at a dealership or contractor shop
You are paid from day one, whether you go through a registered apprenticeship or get hired out of a technical program. Mines, pipelines and remote sites pay well above dealership rates and expect you to travel for it.
$94,460 and up
Field service technicians, mine site mechanics, shop foremen
Three things push pay up: overtime and call-outs, a field service truck instead of a shop bay, and manufacturer training on one brand's machines. Mining and heavy civil work pay the most and ask the most.
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is a registered apprenticeship, where the classroom part is covered or heavily discounted and you are paid while you learn, so the only real cost is your own tools. Heavy equipment tooling is bigger and dearer than car tooling and builds up to $3,000 to $10,000 over years, though you keep it for the rest of your career. The high end is a private technical school program well over $20,000 plus a full tool set bought early. A community college diesel and heavy equipment program at $4,000 to $8,000 a year sits between the two and is worth comparing hard against the private option.
File the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) if you go the school route. If you can get an apprenticeship instead, take it: you finish qualified with a wage history and no student loan.
Overtime
Machines break when they break. Time and a half after 40 hours is the normal expectation in this trade.
Call-out and standby pay
Being on the on-call rotation usually pays a premium before you even leave the house.
Tool allowance
Many dealers pay a set amount per year toward your tool box.
Remote site rotations
Two weeks on, one week off, in a camp. The pay is the reason people do it.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
Two routes: a technical program then a job, or a registered apprenticeship from the start.
High school
Grades 11 and 12
Shop, welding and math. Fix small engines, bikes, anything with a motor. Employers can tell in ten minutes whether you have actually taken something apart.
Pick a route
Decision point
Either a one- or two-year diesel and heavy equipment program at a community college or technical school, or a registered apprenticeship where an employer hires and trains you from day one.
Learn the systems
1 to 2 years
Diesel engines, hydraulics, powertrains, electrical and electronic controls, plus welding. Hydraulics is the part that separates this trade from car mechanics.
Work through the hours
3 to 4 years
A registered apprenticeship typically runs several thousand hours of on-the-job training alongside classroom time before you are signed off.
Manufacturer training and certification
Ongoing
Dealer technicians get sent to brand schools for the machines they service. Certification through the national automotive service testing body is the portable proof of skill.
Math
Pressures, flow rates, torque specifications and gear ratios, every day.
Physics
Hydraulics is fluid physics and you will be reasoning about it constantly.
Shop and welding
You will cut, weld and fabricate as part of ordinary repairs.
Computer class
Modern machines are diagnosed by plugging a laptop into them and reading fault codes.
No state requires a license to repair heavy equipment. What employers check instead is certification from the national automotive service testing body, which offers a medium and heavy duty truck test series as well as tests aimed at this equipment. Those tests require work experience, and time in an accredited training program can count for part of it. One license that does matter in practice: a commercial driver's license, because road testing a truck or driving a service unit often requires one, and shops pay more for people who hold it.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Commercial driver's license
Lets you road test, move equipment and drive the bigger service trucks. Frequently paid for by your employer.
Welding certification
Structural repair on buckets, booms and frames is constant, and a certified welder in the shop is worth more.
Manufacturer master technician programs
Brand-specific ladders run by the big equipment makers. They take years and they come with pay steps.
Hydraulics specialist training
Diagnosing a hydraulic fault properly instead of replacing parts until it stops is the highest value skill in this trade.
Your own reliable transport
Shops and yards are rarely on a bus route, and field work starts wherever the machine died.
Comfort with heights and confined spaces
Working inside a shovel boom or on top of a haul truck is routine.
Photo and note habits
Warranty claims live or die on what you recorded before you pulled the part.
Patience with paperwork
Every hour has to be written against a job number, and warranty work is fussy about wording.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Morning is the work order list: a loader with no lift, a dozer leaking somewhere it should not, a scheduled service on a machine that has to be back by Thursday. Hook the laptop up, pull the fault codes, then go find out whether the codes are telling the truth. Most of it is diagnosis. Then grease, filters, hoses, pins and bushings, and sometimes pulling a transmission with an overhead crane. Field techs spend the day in a service truck driving between broken machines, often in mud, often in the cold, often with a contractor standing beside them asking how long.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
A car mechanic thinks in engines. An excavator is mostly a hydraulic machine: pumps, valves and cylinders moving oil at several thousand pounds per square inch. A pinhole leak at that pressure can inject fluid straight through skin, which is why nobody in this trade checks for leaks with a bare hand.
Modern equipment logs everything and is serviced through manufacturer software. Technicians plug in, read fault histories, calibrate systems and update machine software. A mechanic who will not learn the computer side stops being able to do the job.
The national automotive service tests require hands-on work experience before you can be certified. Finishing an accredited technical program can substitute for a year of it, which is one of the few times in any trade where schooling counts directly as time served.
The United States Department of Labor reports more than 800,000 people a year in registered apprenticeships across the country, earning a wage while they train. Heavy equipment repair is one of the trades that runs them, and it is the cheapest way into this career by a wide margin.
Last checked September 2026. Pay figures are typical full-time annual amounts in United States dollars, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data and published pay scales. They vary by state, employer and experience. Tuition is for in-state students at public schools unless the card says otherwise.