Gary Lee James

During high school I was taking vocational school half a day and setting to be an electrician. The first time I saw a mini excavator show up on my site to dig trenches for me to put electrical conduit at and I knew I was in the wrong career.
I went home and told my folks what I saw and what I wanted to do within a month my mom came home and told me that she Had sent in an application in my name for a articulated Dump Truck Driver and I started next week.!!! 
 

I remember my first day I showed up about two hours early just because I was allowed on a job site with giant equipment. I wanted to look around. Couple hours of training and I was off in my own truck fast-forward about three years, behind the scenes, I had ordered a key ring or master keys from online and had been practicing with all other machines after hours.
One Friday afternoon when the bosses were all out of town on vacation, the lead excavator operator showed up to the job site intoxicated in the morning and was told to go home as well as all of us to just call it a day and we would pick up things on Monday.  I quickly saw this as my opportunity and I split my measly $300 paycheck at the time with the three other operators two dump trucks and one dozer operator and ask them to stay. We stayed until midnight and I moved the 4000 yard quota in the John Deere 450 myself.
 

Monday morning my foreman showed up and Robert told me I was no longer at Dump Truck Driver. He was going to train me to be the best excavator operator Possible. He bought me a next cell phone with the walkie-talkie feature and five shirts with a chest pocket so I could hear every word he was saying While he was giving me right hand and left-hand commands until I perfected the movements of the excavator. After that because of my behind-the-scenes practice, I quickly started running the bulldozer and finishing my own slopes. Also, jumping between the road crew managing the motor grader as well as multiple other piece of equipment under my belt.

10 years in the game, I became foreman shortly there after I started my own earthwork company. Quickly after starting my own company, I buried myself in a 4 foot deep trench, severely injuring my spine and legs, after that I spent a couple of the years trying to stay in the field, but the pain was too great sitting in the cab for 10 hours a day which led me to Colorado, where I took a lead instructor position behind simulators as well as real equipment. I quickly fell in love with the simulation training and the lack of danger and pressure. Within a year we became slightly popular within Colorado. Major companies were sending us their operators to be trained and sent back to them with perfective moves and cycle times safety all this in mind. 

 

during Covid, I moved back to my home state of Florida where I joined who I think is the best simulation company I have been in front of CM Labs and for the last four years I have been the subject matter expert and one of the instructors for what we call SIM guide training kind of a train the Trainer if you buy a training tool from CM Labs and that's what I do right now I travel the United States Canada and other close countries helping new instructors and operators. Get the best out of simulation and keep them out of the Trench until ready.