Siloam Springs Crane Certification Prep, Self-Paced

A factory town's lifting needs

Siloam Springs' larger employers have been in town for decades. A 2001 regional ranking already listed Simmons Foods, Allen Canning, Gates Rubber, DaySpring Cards and La-Z-Boy among the biggest employers in Northwest Arkansas, and a 2017 article still named Simmons, La-Z-Boy and Gates as the city's anchor industries. Not every name has lasted: the Sager Creek vegetable company was sold and its Siloam Springs plant closed in 2017. Simmons itself employs thousands and was ranked first among food companies on Forbes' 2021 list of best midsize employers.

Long-running plants are always being updated. A new production line, a replacement boiler, a heavier press or an expanded cold room means rigging, jacking and crane work, often in a building that was not designed for the machine now going into it. Maintenance crews here regularly deal with low roof trusses, crowded floors and lifts that must be done between production runs.

Poultry and feed operations beyond town

Simmons and Cobb-Vantress run facilities across the countryside of western Benton County, including feed mills, hatcheries and processing plants. In 2017 Simmons announced a $300 million processing complex elsewhere in Benton County, the kind of greenfield build that brings in large mobile cranes for structural steel and rooftop refrigeration.

Feed mills are tall structures with bins, legs and conveyors that are periodically replaced or extended. Those jobs combine height, wind exposure and heavy, awkward components, and they reward operators who understand how boom length and radius shrink capacity on the load chart.

• Line installs and machine moves: Rigger Level II
• Directing lifts in loud plants by radio: signal person
• Truck-mounted cranes on maintenance fleets: service truck crane operator
• Mill and greenfield structural work: mobile crane operator

Training culture in town

John Brown University has a construction management program and broke ground in 2010 on an $8 million building for it, so the idea of construction as a profession, not just a job, has local roots. For working crews, though, the gap is often time. A self-paced course that runs on a phone lets a second-shift maintenance tech study at 2 a.m. and a day-shift rigger study on lunch.

Rules that follow you across the line

Arkansas doesn't license crane operators. Private employers in Siloam Springs answer to federal OSHA through its Little Rock Area Office, and Oklahoma's private employers are also under federal OSHA, so the requirements look the same a few blocks west. For construction, 29 CFR 1926.1427 requires accredited certification plus employer evaluation; 1926.1428 and 1926.1425 cover signal persons and riggers. See the Arkansas requirements guide.

Testing runs through the certifying body. Written exams are available online proctored, at test centers or at events. The practical is a hands-on test at an accredited site. Tulsa is roughly an hour and a half west.