Highway Maintenance Worker Maintain highways, municipal and rural roads, airport runways, and rights-of-way. Duties include patching broken or eroded pavement and repairing guard rails, highway markers, and snow fences. May also mow or clear brush from along road, or plow snow from roadway.
Highway Maintenance Worker is Also Know as
In different settings, Highway Maintenance Worker is titled as
- Equipment Operator (EO)
- Highway Maintainer
- Highway Maintenance Crew Worker
- Highway Maintenance Technician
- Highway Maintenance Worker
- Maintenance Technician
- Maintenance Worker
- Transportation Maintenance Operator
- Transportation Maintenance Specialist (TMS)
- Transportation Worker
Education and Training of Highway Maintenance Worker
Highway Maintenance Worker is categorized in Job Zone Two: Some Preparation Needed
Experience Required for Highway Maintenance Worker
Some previous work-related skill, knowledge, or experience is usually needed. For example, a teller would benefit from experience working directly with the public.
Education Required for Highway Maintenance Worker
These occupations usually require a high school diploma.
Degrees Related to Highway Maintenance Worker
- Bachelor in Construction/Heavy Equipment/Earthmoving Equipment
- Associate Degree Courses in Construction/Heavy Equipment/Earthmoving Equipment
- Masters Degree Courses in Construction/Heavy Equipment/Earthmoving Equipment
- Bachelor in Flagging and Traffic Control
- Associate Degree Courses in Flagging and Traffic Control
- Masters Degree Courses in Flagging and Traffic Control
Training Required for Highway Maintenance Worker
Employees in these occupations need anywhere from a few months to one year of working with experienced employees. A recognized apprenticeship program may be associated with these occupations.
Related Ocuupations
Some Ocuupations related to Highway Maintenance Worker in different industries are
- Operating Engineers and Other Construction Equipment Operators
- Paving, Surfacing, and Tamping Equipment Operators
- Rail-Track Laying and Maintenance Equipment Operators
- Pile Driver Operators
- Septic Tank Servicers and Sewer Pipe Cleaners
- Maintenance and Repair Workers, General
- Construction Laborers
- Excavating and Loading Machine and Dragline Operators, Surface Mining
- Industrial Truck and Tractor Operators
- Helpers--Extraction Workers
- Hazardous Materials Removal Workers
- Rail Car Repairers
- Transportation Engineers
- Transportation Vehicle, Equipment and Systems Inspectors, Except Aviation
- Loading and Moving Machine Operators, Underground Mining
- Electrical Power-Line Installers and Repairers
- Bus and Truck Mechanics and Diesel Engine Specialists
- Heavy and Tractor-Trailer Truck Drivers
- Roustabouts, Oil and Gas
- Millwrights
What Do Highway Maintenance Worker do?
- Flag motorists to warn them of obstacles or repair work ahead.
- Set out signs and cones around work areas to divert traffic.
- Dump, spread, and tamp asphalt, using pneumatic tampers, to repair joints and patch broken pavement.
- Drive trucks to transport crews and equipment to work sites.
- Inspect, clean, and repair drainage systems, bridges, tunnels, and other structures.
- Haul and spread sand, gravel, and clay to fill washouts and repair road shoulders.
- Erect, install, or repair guardrails, road shoulders, berms, highway markers, warning signals, and highway lighting, using hand tools and power tools.
- Remove litter and debris from roadways, including debris from rock and mud slides.
- Clean and clear debris from culverts, catch basins, drop inlets, ditches, and other drain structures.
- Perform roadside landscaping work, such as clearing weeds and brush, and planting and trimming trees.
- Paint traffic control lines and place pavement traffic messages, by hand or using machines.
- Inspect markers to verify accurate installation.
- Apply poisons along roadsides and in animal burrows to eliminate unwanted roadside vegetation and rodents.
- Measure and mark locations for installation of markers, using tape, string, or chalk.
- Apply oil to road surfaces, using sprayers.
- Blend compounds to form adhesive mixtures used for marker installation.
- Place and remove snow fences used to prevent the accumulation of drifting snow on highways.
- Perform preventative maintenance on vehicles and heavy equipment.
- Drive heavy equipment and vehicles with adjustable attachments to sweep debris from paved surfaces, mow grass and weeds, remove snow and ice, and spread salt and sand.
Qualities of Good Highway Maintenance Worker
- Control Precision: The ability to quickly and repeatedly adjust the controls of a machine or a vehicle to exact positions.
- Multilimb Coordination: The ability to coordinate two or more limbs (for example, two arms, two legs, or one leg and one arm) while sitting, standing, or lying down. It does not involve performing the activities while the whole body is in motion.
- Oral Comprehension: The ability to listen to and understand information and ideas presented through spoken words and sentences.
- Arm-Hand Steadiness: The ability to keep your hand and arm steady while moving your arm or while holding your arm and hand in one position.
- Static Strength: The ability to exert maximum muscle force to lift, push, pull, or carry objects.
- Problem Sensitivity: The ability to tell when something is wrong or is likely to go wrong. It does not involve solving the problem, only recognizing that there is a problem.
- Near Vision: The ability to see details at close range (within a few feet of the observer).
- Manual Dexterity: The ability to quickly move your hand, your hand together with your arm, or your two hands to grasp, manipulate, or assemble objects.
- Auditory Attention: The ability to focus on a single source of sound in the presence of other distracting sounds.
- Far Vision: The ability to see details at a distance.
- Finger Dexterity: The ability to make precisely coordinated movements of the fingers of one or both hands to grasp, manipulate, or assemble very small objects.
- Oral Expression: The ability to communicate information and ideas in speaking so others will understand.
- Selective Attention: The ability to concentrate on a task over a period of time without being distracted.
- Visualization: The ability to imagine how something will look after it is moved around or when its parts are moved or rearranged.
- Response Orientation: The ability to choose quickly between two or more movements in response to two or more different signals (lights, sounds, pictures). It includes the speed with which the correct response is started with the hand, foot, or other body part.
- Flexibility of Closure: The ability to identify or detect a known pattern (a figure, object, word, or sound) that is hidden in other distracting material.
- Reaction Time: The ability to quickly respond (with the hand, finger, or foot) to a signal (sound, light, picture) when it appears.
- Trunk Strength: The ability to use your abdominal and lower back muscles to support part of the body repeatedly or continuously over time without "giving out" or fatiguing.
- Stamina: The ability to exert yourself physically over long periods of time without getting winded or out of breath.
- Extent Flexibility: The ability to bend, stretch, twist, or reach with your body, arms, and/or legs.
- Information Ordering: The ability to arrange things or actions in a certain order or pattern according to a specific rule or set of rules (e.g., patterns of numbers, letters, words, pictures, mathematical operations).
- Rate Control: The ability to time your movements or the movement of a piece of equipment in anticipation of changes in the speed and/or direction of a moving object or scene.
- Speech Recognition: The ability to identify and understand the speech of another person.
- Depth Perception: The ability to judge which of several objects is closer or farther away from you, or to judge the distance between you and an object.
- Speech Clarity: The ability to speak clearly so others can understand you.
- Time Sharing: The ability to shift back and forth between two or more activities or sources of information (such as speech, sounds, touch, or other sources).
- Perceptual Speed: The ability to quickly and accurately compare similarities and differences among sets of letters, numbers, objects, pictures, or patterns. The things to be compared may be presented at the same time or one after the other. This ability also includes comparing a presented object with a remembered object.
- Deductive Reasoning: The ability to apply general rules to specific problems to produce answers that make sense.
- Inductive Reasoning: The ability to combine pieces of information to form general rules or conclusions (includes finding a relationship among seemingly unrelated events).
- Category Flexibility: The ability to generate or use different sets of rules for combining or grouping things in different ways.
- Hearing Sensitivity: The ability to detect or tell the differences between sounds that vary in pitch and loudness.
- Dynamic Strength: The ability to exert muscle force repeatedly or continuously over time. This involves muscular endurance and resistance to muscle fatigue.
- Spatial Orientation: The ability to know your location in relation to the environment or to know where other objects are in relation to you.
- Gross Body Coordination: The ability to coordinate the movement of your arms, legs, and torso together when the whole body is in motion.
- Speed of Limb Movement: The ability to quickly move the arms and legs.
- Written Comprehension: The ability to read and understand information and ideas presented in writing.
- Visual Color Discrimination: The ability to match or detect differences between colors, including shades of color and brightness.
- Written Expression: The ability to communicate information and ideas in writing so others will understand.
- Speed of Closure: The ability to quickly make sense of, combine, and organize information into meaningful patterns.
- Glare Sensitivity: The ability to see objects in the presence of a glare or bright lighting.
- Mathematical Reasoning: The ability to choose the right mathematical methods or formulas to solve a problem.
- Sound Localization: The ability to tell the direction from which a sound originated.
- Fluency of Ideas: The ability to come up with a number of ideas about a topic (the number of ideas is important, not their quality, correctness, or creativity).
- Originality: The ability to come up with unusual or clever ideas about a given topic or situation, or to develop creative ways to solve a problem.
- Wrist-Finger Speed: The ability to make fast, simple, repeated movements of the fingers, hands, and wrists.
- Gross Body Equilibrium: The ability to keep or regain your body balance or stay upright when in an unstable position.
- Number Facility: The ability to add, subtract, multiply, or divide quickly and correctly.
- Peripheral Vision: The ability to see objects or movement of objects to one's side when the eyes are looking ahead.
- Memorization: The ability to remember information such as words, numbers, pictures, and procedures.
- Night Vision: The ability to see under low-light conditions.
- Explosive Strength: The ability to use short bursts of muscle force to propel oneself (as in jumping or sprinting), or to throw an object.
- Dynamic Flexibility: The ability to quickly and repeatedly bend, stretch, twist, or reach out with your body, arms, and/or legs.
Tools Used by Highway Maintenance Worker
- 10-ton crawlers
- 10-ton tandem-axle dump trucks
- 13000-23000 pound graders
- 30-ton clam buckets
- 4-6 ton roller patchers
- 8-ton dump trucks
- Adjustable widemouth pliers
- Adjustable wrenches
- Aggregate spreaders
- Air compressors
- Asphalt reclaimers
- Athey loaders
- Belly dump tractor trailers
- Berm drag tractors
- Bituminous pavers
- Boom trucks
- Brush chippers
- Bucket trucks
- Bulldozers
- Bush axes
- Catch basin vacuum cleaners
- Chain saws
- Chemical sprayers
- Cherry pickers
- Chip spreaders
- Circuit testing equipment
- Cold planers
- Compactors
- Computerized weed spray trucks
- Concrete groovers
- Concrete mixers
- Concrete paving vibrators
- Concrete saws
- Culvert cleaners
- Desktop computers
- Digger derricks
- Ditchers
- Draglines
- Dump trucks
- Epoxy guns
- Flatbed trailers
- Forklifts
- Four-wheel drive front end loaders
- Front end loaders
- Gas transporters
- Generators
- Gradalls
- Graders
- Graffiti removing lasers
- Hammers
- Harrows
- Heavy trucks
- High-pressure hydraulic pumps
- Hole diggers/augers
- Hydraulic excavators
- Hydraulic spreaders
- Impact wrenches
- Jackhammers
- Laser printers
- Laydown machines
- Light trucks
- Low boys
- Machetes
- Measuring wheels
- Medium pressure hydraulic pumps
- Mounted pavement breakers
- Mud jacks
- Multipurpose vacuum street sweepers
- Oil heating burners
- Paint guns
- Paint mixers
- Paint transfer pumps
- Patch rollers less than 9 tons
- Pavement grinders
- Pavement joint sealers
- Pavement rollers
- Personal computers
- Picks
- Pile drivers
- Platform trucks
- Pneumatic tampers
- Portable welding equipment
- Pothole excavation milling machines
- Power broom street sweepers
- Power saws
- Power screeds
- Pressure washers
- Pull type pavers
- Push mowers
- Rakes
- Rear brush hog mowers
- Rear flail mowers
- Rock cutters
- Rock drills
- Rotary snowplows
- Sand spreaders
- Sandblasters
- Scaffolding
- Scissor trucks
- Screwdrivers
- Seeders
- Self-propelled cranes
- Self-propelled road wideners
- Self-propelled sweepers
- Sewer cleaners
- Sewer eels
- Shovels
- Side dozers
- Side-mount rotary mowers
- Snoopers
- Snow blowers
- Snowplows
- Spades
- Steam cleaning equipment
- Stone box spreaders
- Stump cutters
- Swinging stages
- Swiss hammers
- Tanker trucks
- Tar distributors
- Tar kettles
- Theodolites
- Thermoplastic applicators
- Tire chains
- Tow brooms
- Towable barricades
- Tractor disc attachments
- Tractor-mounted mowers
- Transport trucks
- Truck low-bed trailer combos
- Truck mounted cranes
- Truck mounted excavators
- Truck-mounted pavement striping machines
- Two way radios
- Two-wheel drive front end loaders
- Vans
- Water pumps
- Water trucks
- Weedeaters
- Wheeled hydraulic booms
- Windrow loaders
Technology Skills required for Highway Maintenance Worker
- Database software
- Microsoft Excel
- Microsoft Office software
- Microsoft Outlook
- Microsoft PowerPoint
- Microsoft Word
- Spreadsheet software
- Web browser software
- Word processing software