Salary and Outlook

According to the US Department of Labor, there are 34,600 people employed as conveyor operators and tenders in the United States. The median annual salary is $36,420. Entry level employees earn approximately $28,790 per year and senior employees earn approximately $48,950 per year.

Estimates do not include other potential benefits such as health insurance, overtime pay, or retirement benefits that may be offered by employers.

Job Duties

• Observe conveyor operations and monitor lights, dials, and gauges to maintain specified operating levels and to detect equipment malfunctions.
• Record production data such as weights, types, quantities, and storage locations of materials, as well as equipment performance problems and downtime.
• Load, unload, or adjust materials or products on conveyors by hand, by using lifts, hoists, and scoops, or by opening gates, chutes, or hoppers.
• Stop equipment or machinery and clear jams, using poles, bars, and hand tools, or remove damaged materials from conveyors.
• Distribute materials, supplies, and equipment to work stations, using lifts and trucks.
• Observe packages moving along conveyors to identify packages, detect defective packaging, and perform quality control.
• Collect samples of materials or products, checking them to ensure conformance to specifications or sending them to laboratories for analysis.
• Position deflector bars, gates, chutes, or spouts to divert flow of materials from one conveyor onto another conveyor.
• Repair or replace equipment components or parts such as blades, rolls, and pumps.
• Manipulate controls, levers, and valves to start pumps, auxiliary equipment, or conveyors, and to adjust equipment positions, speeds, timing, and material flows.
• Weigh or measure materials and products, using scales or other measuring instruments, or read scales on conveyors that continually weigh products, to verify specified tonnages and prevent overloads.
• Read production and delivery schedules, and confer with supervisors, to determine sorting and transfer procedures, arrangement of packages on pallets, and destinations of loaded pallets.
• Operate consoles to control automatic palletizing equipment.
• Inform supervisors of equipment malfunctions that need to be addressed.
• Press console buttons to deflect packages to predetermined accumulators or reject lines.
• Clean, sterilize, and maintain equipment, machinery, and work stations, using hand tools, shovels, brooms, chemicals, hoses, and lubricants.
• Affix identifying information to materials or products, using hand tools.
• Move, assemble, and connect hoses or nozzles to material hoppers, storage tanks, conveyor sections or chutes, and pumps.
• Thread strapping through strapping tools and secure battens with strapping to form protective pallets around extrusions.
• Contact workers in work stations or other departments to request movement of materials, products, or machinery, or to notify them of incoming shipments and their estimated delivery times.
• Measure dimensions of bundles, using rulers, and cut battens to required sizes, using power saws.
• Operate elevator systems in conjunction with conveyor systems.
• Join sections of conveyor frames at temporary working areas, and connect power units.

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