my buddy went to wyotech for chassisfab, heavy equipment diesel, and got certified for welding and diesel which helped him a bit.

He is a heavy equipment diesel tech that currently works for modern machinery. he used to work for pape machinery.

He said the welding cert has helped him quite a bit as he is one of the only 2 certified welders in the shop he works at, so they have him doing a lot of thumb attachments and such on excavators which requires a lot of welding.

He is making decent money. believe he is making $28/hr + lots of overtime.

equipment/diesel mechanic jobs are not cheap to get into though...you need to have thousands of dollars worth of your own tools. and you pretty much never stop buying tools as there is always some new or special tool needed to do certain jobs or to work on new equipment/vehicles.

and get used to electronic/computer control on vehicles and machines...hell you think cars are bad with computers...heavy equipment is worse...those things even have satellite uplink with the computer linked into every system.

 

Well one thing that I can add is that your MOS can help you a lot if it is anything mechanic related. I am choosing to us my gi bill, but alot of my buddies who were 1142s, 1341s, or 35 whatevers, went straight to work for companies like cat even when they said that they didn't know much.

 

Thanks for all the input guys. I'll definitely be checking out the apprentice programs as well as some of the junior colleges in the area. Unfortunately I'm infantry so no dice with MOS help. I'm really hoping that the whole "tax incentive for hiring veterans" will help me land a job