Fort McCoy RTS-Maintenance holds first vehicle recovery operations course for fiscal year 2021

Students in the Fort McCoy Regional Training Site (RTS)-Maintenance Wheeled Vehicle Recovery Operations Course were at the North Post Vehicle Recovery Site on Oct. 23 and 24 practicing their skills recovering military vehicles with military wrecker vehicles.

That field training was a big part of the course, instructors say, because it gets them the experience they need to do the same kind of work at their own units and home stations.

The course trains Soldiers with 91-series military occupational specialties (MOS) in the Army’s H8 additional MOS skill identifier, according to the course description. The 17-day course covers operation and maintenance of recovery vehicles and use of standard procedures to rig and recover wheeled vehicles. Related training tasks include oxygen and acetylene gas welding; boom and hoist operations; winch operations; and recovery of mired, overturned, and disabled vehicles.

Students also have classroom training and testing, and they spend nearly 80 percent of their training time at Fort McCoy’s Vehicle Recovery Site learning more about wreckers and vehicle recovery, said Master Sgt. Jason Boyles with RTS-Maintenance.

One military vehicle used in the training is the M984A4 Recovery Truck (Wrecker). The truck is equipped with a crane and winch-retrieval system and is able to recover vehicles weighing in excess of 10 tons.

Students also use the M1089 (MTV Wrecker. This wrecker, based on the M1083 cargo truck, is fitted with a recovery hamper and a recovery winch. It also has a crane with a 5-ton capacity that can be used for various lifting and hauling tasks.

Staff Sgt. Mark Burns served as an assistant instructor for the course during the field training. He discussed what the goal was in one scenario.

“Here we were working to recover a mired vehicle from an incline,” Burns said. The training area includes a gradual graded hill with soft sediment that aids in the training effort where the wrecker pulls the vehicle to an area where it won’t be stuck.

Similar training is done at the site through use of the mire pit when the weather and the water in the pit is warmer, Burns said.

Dozens of Soldiers started training at RTS-Maintenance complex since October during the first classes of fiscal year 2021 began at the facility.

RTS-Maintenance trains hundreds of Soldiers every year in the Army’s 91-series MOS and administratively supports the training of Soldiers in the 89B MOS.

The unit aligns under the 3rd Brigade (Ordnance), 94th Division of the 80th Training Command, and is centrally located in the cantonment area with an entire complex to hold training.

Located in the heart of the upper Midwest, Fort McCoy is the only U.S. Army installation in Wisconsin.

The installation has provided support and facilities for the field and classroom training of more than 100,000 military personnel from all services nearly every year since 1984.

Learn more about Fort McCoy online at https://home.army.mil/mccoy, on Facebook by searching “ftmccoy,” and on Twitter by searching “usagmccoy.”