Welcome to Career
Explore Northwest Live. My name is Tina Swannack,
and I'm the Career Explore Northwest Educator,/Producer for KSPS - PBS Public Television
in Spokane, Washington. Thank you for joining us today. Career. Explore Northwest
Live is an interactive zoom event that connects young people
with professionals to learn about careers
and career paths. And today, we'll be learning
about Lineman careers with the help of a special guest
from Avista, Tyler Brink. As I mentioned, Tyler is
a Lineman for Avista Utilities. Avista is an energy company
involved in the production, transmission,
and distribution of energy, as well as other energy
related businesses. Avista Utility is the company's
operating division, provides electricity and natural gas
to customers across 30,000 square miles
in four northwestern states, and Avista subsidiary provides
retail electric service in the city
and Bureau of Juneau, Alaska. The company was founded in 1889. Recently, Avista was
recognized for the fifth time by Ethisphere, a global leader in defining and advancing the standards
of ethical business practices, as one of the 2024 World's
Most Ethical Companies. Hello, Tyler. Thank you for being here today
to share information about your lineman
career and career path. Yeah, thanks for having me. And we also have two schools
with us today. We have Deer Park High School, and we also have East Valley
High School. So thank you
to both of those groups. with East Valley High School,
we have Career Counselor Mike May and with the Deer Park
High School, we have their instructor,
Matt Wallblom. Thank you for being with us
today. Okay, before we get started,
I wanted to quickly share the agenda
for today's event. First, Tyler is going to tell us
a little bit about his daily work as a lineman
and his career journey. And then we'll open the floor
to questions from our student guests from Deer Park
High School and East Valley High School. And we won't be taking
any questions through the chat today.
We're instead going to be engaging
in this live discussion. Okay. So let's
get started with our event. And again, welcome, Tyler. will you please describe for us
a little bit about what a lineman does and share with us
your career path to becoming a lineman? A yeah. Basically, as a lineman,
we take care of anything from distribution, transmission, basically
anything out of the substation is what we do. So, from generation
all the way to your doorstep, whether it be high voltage transmission lines
or secondary voltages that you guys would see
inside your school or house. I'm kind of a newer journeyman. I've only been topped out
for two years with Avista. But I've been with the Avista
for coming up on six years now. I started as a groundman,
which was about a year process. Got an apprenticeship
after that, very luckily. My apprenticeship was three
and a half years long, of course, paid
while I was on the job. And then about two years ago,
I topped out with Avista. So now I'm a journeyman lineman. Great. Can you explain just real
quickly what topped out means? Basically the next step
for being an apprentice. It means I am a qualified
electrical worker to now go up and work out high
distribution lines by myself, or whether it be
with my pole partner, another journeyman lineman,
and then be able to teach apprentices
and groundmen the trade, as well Okay. Thank you. That provides
a little bit of clarification. I wasn't familiar
with the term myself. Ok now we'll start, the question
and answer portion of our event East Valley, what is your first question
for Tyler? I■m Monte, and I was wondering
what skill you developed since you became
a professional. I guess the skill to teach. Right out of high school, I actually went to East Valley
High School. I graduated in 2010, but I was
an electrician for four years. A residential electrician. And I always knew
I had buddies in the trade. It's kind of cool
to actually be in the trade now. I kind of took a later
step in life, but the ability to teach
and learn to teach. Anybody can go to work
and do their job. But taking that knowledge that you learn on the job
and then being able to teach it, is probably the biggest skil
I've got out of this. Deer Park, what's your
first question for Tyler? I'm Jacob, I'm a senior,
and my question is do other skills or attributes
give you an advantage at getting the job or higher
starting pay, such as, knowing how to weld,
having a two year or four year degree, or knowing, or
having gone to Lineman School? It's very short and sweet. No. It doesn't hurt, right? I personally didn't
go to a Lineman school. I was lucky enough to get hired
on as a groundman. Work my way through that position. Make myself noticed
and then get an apprenticeship. I would say about half
to three quarters of the people that we run through
our apprenticeship have previous line
school experience. And don't get me wrong,
like previous life experience really helps. If I were to do it
right out of high school, I don't know if I necessarily
would have made it in the trade, just because there's
a lot of aspects throughout life
that you learn, like age and previous job experiences,
that really help. But really, out of high school,
it doesn't matter who you are, if you come here to work and you
work hard, you'll get noticed and your previous experiences
don't really matter. East Valley next question. Hi, my name's Kempton. What new skills
have you developed as a professional
since taking this role? Probably just to touch back
on teaching again. I've been topped out
for two years as I already told you guys,
and I teach. I actually
teach our apprenticeship school. So if you do get
an apprenticeship, whether it be with Avista
or anywhere else in the Pacific
Northwest, you go through a school while
you're in your apprenticeship. And I'm actually one of the instructors in that school.
Teaching electrical theory, bases of transformers
and whatnot. It's fun for me to. Anybody can take a job,
go to work every day, do your thing, come home
and leave work at work. But, it's cool to be able to do
or be in a position where I can teach what I know and keep
and basically stay sharp. Deer Park, next question. How difficult is it to get
a high paying traveling job? You mean
like being a lineman? Yeah. I'd say it's pretty easy. How would I say this? I guess the utility portion of a lineman
is completely separate than, like,
a construction lineman. So, the benefit of what I have
is I have three kids and a wife. I'm able to go to work every day and come home at night
and see them every single day. So with that, there are
some downsides in pay. If you were to become
a construction lineman an outside
hand, is what they call it. You are going to
travel the world and you're going to make
a lot more money doing it. But you're going to give up those sacrifices, right,
of being around your family, seeing your kids every day
and so on and so forth. But I would say it is easier to be an outside hand
and travel the world and do line work than it is
to be a hand at a utility. The older you get, the more or less
you find your comforts, right? And you want to be home
to your kids where you grew up,
whatever it may be. So the utility side of
it is more sought after, I would say, in a way,
to the older linemen that have already experienced
the traveling and had their fun. But it's definitely not a bad
way to go. You make more money
and you have a lot of fun. I personally have never done
that. East Valley. What kind of decisions
do you make in your role? Oh tough question.
I guess on a day to day basis. Depends what we're doing
and what job we're working on. There's a hundred different ways
to do line work. That's you. There's more
than a hundred different ways. And that's the problem
is working with your crew, whether it be your pole partner
or your apprentice, your groundman,
whatever it may be. Coming up with a solution to the job
that you're going to tackle. Because the best part
about our job, being a lineman, is that no day
or job is truly the same. Yeah, we set poles,
we put wire in the air, but it's all situational. So it really just comes
down to working with your crew and being able to formulate a game plan
before you start your job, and then perform on that game
plan and not deviate from it. Deer Park. I■m Aiden. And like what advancements/
opportunities exist for the career
and how do you qualify for them? I wouldn■t say being a lineman
is bottom of the barrel, right? Because we start with our groundman apprenticeship and then a topped out
journeyman lineman. But within the company,
depending on where you are, there's more portals to move
up. Whether you want to be a general foreman
or a foreman that pushes crews. A servicemen. You work by yourself,
and you're primarily the guy that takes
all the trouble calls. Whether it be park powers or,
you know, squirrels on line, trees and lines,
whatever it may be. But if that's not for you, you also have the option
of moving up over time into management. If that's a role you want to
take. East Valley, next question What's one of like your biggest
challenges in your role? I'd say probably personalities. This trade,
you are working with a crew. And that crew
is like your second family. And being able to mind and mesh
with all those people on the crew is,
I wouldn't say it's difficult, but it's definitely something you got to do.
You can't go to work and be standoffish or not
communicate well. And I'll be completely honest
with you, there are times when you're working with guys
you don't necessarily want to be working
with or like, right? That comes
with anything in life. But being able to mesh and work
well together might be one of them. Deer Park, next question? I'm a junior. What kind of tasks
are prioritized as linemen, such as having storms
or have there been floods? Etc. So our day
to day work would fall under, there's
a lot of different things we do to maintain
our infrastructure, right? It's not just taking a phone call
or sitting down in the morning and going to fix downed power
lines or whatever it may be. Avista
and a lot of other utilities, they focus
on their infrastructure and maintaining a solid infrastructure so
everybody can keep their power. So I would say first
and foremost, that is our day to day
task, right? Maintaining our grid,
maintaining our infrastructure. But when a storm arrives
or there is an outage, I would say that
does prompt everything. And we have specific people
within the company to take those calls and work
those storms. Any outage, no matter
the size, is Avista's priority. I can't speak for anybody else, but that's the general gameplan,
right? You lose power. One of us
is going to take a call. You'll figure out what happened
and go fix it. And that is, I would say,
the number one priority aside of just a standard day to day
grid hardening and maintaining
of the infrastructure. East Valley, next question. Do you have a mentor? If so, how have they helped you
in your career? I wouldn't say necessarily
have a mentor. Part of my job as a lineman.
a journeyman lineman is to mentor
all of our apprenticeship or all of our apprentices
and groundman that come up
through the trade. I knew that this is what
I wanted to do at a younger age. It just took me a while
to get here, and I worked some some pretty terrible jobs before
I actually did make it here. Which makes me more thankful
for what I have. But as far as having a mentor, there are people that kind
of take you under their wing. You find a good group of guys
to work with, and they'll teach you things, beyond the day to day stuff,
which is nice. It makes your job
a lot easier, but you kind of pick and choose
your mentor. You, I mean, you guys,
I assume you guys are smart and you know what
you want to do, and you can tell the difference between people
that enjoy their job every day,
come to work and love teaching, and the ones that don't.
Because we all know there are those two
different types of people. You just kind of got to take it upon yourself
to select your mentor. Find out where you want to be
and where you want to go. Deer Park, next question. I'm Christopher
and I'm a sophomore. What is your process
or what was your process for getting hired
as a groundman, getting trained and then
moving up into lineman work and just apprenticeship stuff? Yeah, so I got hired on as a groundman. I think there was a pool
of about 100 applicants that tried out
for this position. And when I say groundman,
I mean you're basically just starting
at the bottom tier to work your way up
through an apprenticeship. You're the guy with the shovel. You're the one digging
the ditches, putting the conduit in the ground
for your underground wire. With an end goal, right? You're
not, your goal to get through, I should say this way. Your goal is not to be hired on as a permanent groundman,
it's to become a lineman. So it's a stepping stone. I was fortunate enough to get hired on with Avista
and worked my way up. But once I got my groundman
time, done, which was a year, you have the ability
to apply for an apprenticeship. Lucky enough,
I got the apprenticeship first go around. The apprenticeship starts,
well its a seven step process, which turns out to be three
and a half years. 7000 hours.
They calculate it both ways. So there's really no way of finishing early
or getting your time done early. Once you complete
your apprenticeship, your seven step program,
which they rotate you through the different yards
in Avista■s territory, you then have the ability
to have your hours signed off, and then take your test
through your local union to become a journeyman lineman. With that previous knowledge
that you've learned on the job for the
past three and a half years. East Valley, next question. What has surprised you the most about your position
in your industry? There's so many different ways
to do one thing. Just because you're taught
one way to do things, and you may be taught that way
over and over and over again, you'll work with somebody else who, let's say comes up in a different utility
or a different company and does the exact opposite
of the way you've been taught, but completes the job safely. You really just never stop learning this trade,
which is kind of cool. I guess I should say
this way too. You can. And there are people out there that don't continue to learn
and better themselves, but it is the cool part
about this job, that you have the option to keep learning.
Even as a topped out journeyman, you never quit learning.
Deer Park. My question is, is being a storm
chaser a specific department in Avista? No. From the utility side. Avista, there's no specific
storm chasing. We have, I want to we have 13 different
docks within the utility that covers our region. And each dock
does their own section, I guess, like I'm
a Spokane lineman. I deal with Spokane
and surrounding areas. Occasionally
I'll take a storm call and go as far as Colville
or as far south as Grangeville. But primarily, I■m
in a specific dock. If that's what you want to do, and you want to be a storm
chaser, I would say it's
a specific type of lineman. Yes. But you're not going to find
that within a utility. You're going to go
sign your local union books, and then you're going to take
a phone call. Say a storm hits east, far east. They're going to call you
from that local union, and then you're going to drive
or fly over to wherever that calls from
and start working. There are a lot of people
that live their life that way. East Valley, next question. So I heard you saying like construction lineman, is there
different types in linemen and, how much do they usually get
paid? Yeah, there is different
types of lineman. So, I'm a utility lineman, as you guys know. So I work a lot of primarily,
primarily what a distribution utility lineman works on is
I wouldn't say your lower voltages, but the lines
you see around your areas range anywhere
from 7000V to 14,000V, and those are the lines
that go through your substations at a lower voltage to then
be taken through a transformer and provide power to you. You have transmission lineman. You have I mean, you have multiple
different kinds of linemen, but Avista■s primarily
distribution, some transmission. And as far as pay goes, I'm
a utility lineman, like I said. Our wages are decided
by our local union and you guys can probably find
that information out online. But, you do have the ability
to make a lot more money as a construction hand, doing
whatever it may be. You might work transmission,
you might work distribution, you might spend
most of your time in a substation
rebuilding bus work. It really just depends. Deer Park. Connor. Did you have any
professional experiences unrelated to this industry
that allowed you to excel
in your current position? Oh, yeah. Absolutely. We deal with a lot of younger
guys, right out of high school that want to be linemen,
which is absolutely awesome. 18, 19 years old,
getting hired on as a groundman. And you can kind of see
the look at shock in their eye. Not to say
you guys would be like that. But having those previous job
experiences, as a residential electrician
for some time, working the excavation,
did some trucking. I worked some pretty terrible
jobs. I was even a dishwasher
for my very first job. But having that
previous experience and then getting on at Avista,
making very good money, really gave me some insight as to how hard I need to work
to get where I want to be. Because jobs like this,
they're not for everybody, yes, but we, we definitely
have it good as far as pay goes, but we have to work really hard
in order to get that pay, right? So having those terrible jobs
ahead of time, really made me appreciate what I have now. East Valley. How long is your work day
and work week? I could make it as short
as I want. I work in my standard 40 hours a week, 7 to 3:30 is our
schedule, Monday through Friday. But as a lineman,
I have the ability to answer the phone
whenever I want. So, like I said earlier,
if there's an outage reported, goes through our system
operators, which then call linemen
to go patrol or figure out what the outage,
what the cause of the outage is. So, my workday can end at 3:30,
right? And start at seven. But I can take a phone call
virtually any night of the week or any day
during the weekend and work really as much as I want. Kind of depends. There's some guys that have thousands of hours of overtime
at the end of the year, and there's some
that have a couple of hundred. So it's up to you. Deer Park, next question. I'm Cordell. What new skills
have you developed as a professional
since taking this role? I would say
they're necessarily new skills. Like I said earlier, there's hundreds, thousands of ways
to do one necessary way. I just continue
to keep learning those multiple ways
to do things. Yeah. Just being open
minded, continuing to learn is really all I can say,
but that's an option you guys have either be closed
minded or open minded. I think this job's
a lot more fun going to work every day
and wanting to learn new ways to do things. East Valley. What do
you think is the best way to earn a job in this industry?
Work hard. Just like anything, right? Yeah. To sum it up. Work hard. I mean, you can go anywhere. You don't necessarily have to go
with Avista, right? There's
perks of being an outside hand, outside lineman construction
and working here. But really, all you guys have
for yourself in life, which you, figure it out now, you will
later, Is your name, right? All you have is your name
and what's attached to you. People. People will know you before
you even get through a dock or before you go work
across the east, right? If that's what you want to do? Your name's attached
with you wherever you go. So you guys, it's up to you guys. But work hard
and make a good name for yourself
and that'll get you far. Deer Park, next question. What is health insurance
look like and what are some dangerous parts of the job
that you have to tackle? So as far as my health insurance
with Avista, Avista is a great company
to work for. I can't speak
just for the line side, right? It's an entire company. But they take care of us
here very well. As far as on the outside goes, there's a company called LINECO,
that provides your health insurance
at virtually no cost to you. If you do decide to go outside
and work construction. Along with the pay and along
with the health insurance and benefits, it's a good career
path, really good career path. And if you're smart
with your money at a young age, you can earn yourself
a really healthy retirement. And then what was the second
part of your question? What are like everyday
dangerous tasks that things they have to deal
with? Live voltage.
Right? High voltage. I, I wouldn't say
necessarily that high voltage is the most dangerous thing
we deal with. It can range anywhere from high
voltage being 7000 plus volts to lower voltage,
like you guys see in your house. Voltage
doesn't necessarily matter of how dangerous it can
be, right? Just keeping your head on a swivel
and staying cut in 24/seven is probably the most important
part. Deer Park. Is there anything
you'd recommend kids to do, or any jobs you'd recommend them
to do before they went into the lineman
career? Not necessarily. If this is a career path you know
you want, I'd say go for it. If you're 100% sure
that'd being a lineman■s for you then I wouldn't, I wouldn't take
no for an answer. I'd start there
and work your way up to get where you want to be. Yeah, previous
job experience will help you, not more or less in the work
that we do, but just make you appreciate
what you have. But, like I said, if this
is something you want to do, I would chase it and chase it
hard. East Valley.
How physical can your job get? It's definitely a physical,
very physical trade. Not the best on your body, I will say. But if you stay in shape,
take care of yourself, you can maintain. I wouldn't say this is a job you can do until retirement,
right? You might want to look for a
different option at that point. Working your way up into a foreman position
or a serviceman position. Because it is strenuous
on your body. Right? Working the storms,
the cold nights, freezing temperatures
and even the heat, right? Getting old, it definitely would be
a little bit more difficult, but as long as you maintain yourself and take care of yourself,
I think it's position you can do
for a good portion of your life. Deer Park. My name is Nathan. If I get on as a groundman,
what's the steps of the procedure to kind of climb
up the ladder in the company? So from getting hired
on the groundman, with Avista, it's about a year,
a year process. And throughout that year,
you'll have monthly evaluations. Not from one specific person. You will be bounced around
through multiple yards. And by yards,
I mean the different docks within Avista
service territory. Throughout that yeartime, excuse me, those reports... You don't, you basically
just don't get a report. And as long as you do good it's
pushed back to the side, right? Those reports
are your reputation throughout your groundman time. And for when applying
for that apprenticeship, whoever the hiring managers
are going to be or the people
on the interview panel, they will
review those previous reports and determine how well you did
through your groundman time, and that'll help
you get your apprenticeship. And then throughout
your apprenticeship, it's the same thing. You deal with reports every 3 to 6 months, depending
on how you're doing and you keep you getting reports, you■ll have the ability
to take that test and pop out in the end. But it is the process. Aside from learning and knowing the trade, personalities
are huge. Being able
to get along with your coworkers and your mentors
throughout your entire process. Speaking personally,
I don't want to teach somebody that comes to work
and treats it as a job. It's kind of, relaxed. Doesn't seem like they care
too much. You know what I mean? I want to teach the guy
that comes to work excited to know the trade
and know the job. That's going to want me, that's going to make me
want to teach them more, if that makes sense? And that
does go noticed. East Valley. What was the pathway
you took out of high school to get to your position today? I was kind of a whirlwind,
right? I didn't do it
right out of high school. I think I started
my apprenticeship, it was actually my groundman
time. I would have been 26. But right out of high school,
I had some very good friends that went to Lineman School,
right out of high school. Got an apprenticeship
through Mountain States, which is a company
based out of Montana. And just talking with them
through the years while I was doing
what I was doing. Then making great money traveling the world,
having a good time. It's always something
I wanted to do. And that's why I got my CDL
right out of high school. Because I knew to be a lineman
I had to have a CDL, right? If you guys didn't know that. But life happens, right? You have kids,
you get comfortable. I just took me a lot longer
to get where I wanted to be. I don't regret it by any means because I had that previous
job experience. But, right out of high school, I knew that's
what I wanted to do. It just took me, it took me a lot longer than I wish it would have to get
where I am now. Deer Park. I have a question
on transport tools. Do you get loaned
tools and transportation, or do you use your truck
and your tools? So with Avista, I can't speak
personally outside. With Avista, my tools are completely provided
for and once I get to work, I'll drive my personal pickup
to work to and from work. But while I'm at work,
it's in an Avista owned company vehicle,
that we use for transport. Whether it be our crew trucks,
which are like our F550 trucks. All the way to our line
trucks and bucket trucks, it's all provided. Construction
is kind of the same thing. They'll provide you with your
transportation on the job. But as far as tooling
goes, that's all on you. So that's another huge benefit
of going to a utility, right? Because I don't know
if you guys know much about tools or line tools in
general, is they are insanely expensive. And we are extremely spoiled
here. So having that ability to have
the best tools, is huge. And it maintains your body
a lot better too, right? You're not using hand tools compared to battery tools,
which we get to use. East Valley What are some requirements
you need to like get into Avista? Work ethic. Right out of high school,
the best thing you can do is to go to line school, I would say, if that's career
path you know, you want to do. During line school,
you will get your CDL, which is mandatory, of course,
because we drive bigger trucks. But you don't have to. I didn't, like I said earlier.
Just go get your CDL. And then start applying. Whether it be at Avista
or anywhere else, you can apply for groundman
spots through all your local unions. So it doesn't have to be here in Spokane
or anywhere around here. You can go sign local
union books to be a groundman and it'll be the same process,
right? Once you get that groundman
spot through your union or utility, it■s
just working your way up through the process
and earning that apprenticeship. Deer Park, next question. So when you get called the storm
and you go sign the books, say across the country.
When you come back and you really like your career
that you were on, do you sign the books here? How hard is it to for you
to get back on the same crew? Is it really just a random
chance? It's completely
random chance. So that's, that's a huge part of the reason
why I stay and why I'm still here right
now. Right? The storm chasing. It's fun. It's very lucrative. But taking the chance of leaving
for three months to a year, whatever it may be, and then coming back and getting a job back on Avista,
or a local utility in this area. Because I want to stay
where I live. Right? It's pretty slim. The chances are not very good. So I take that pay cut right, and stay here locally. But it's worth it to me
because it's where, it's where I want to be.
East Valley. How many people are usually
in your crew? Depends normally on the day, but there's
normally your line foreman, you have two journeymen
on the crew, an apprentice and an operator, with Avista. Depending on where you
go, you won't get an operator. But those guys are backhoe
drivers. They dig all of our polehole,
dig our trenches. Bring us material
to backfill around the poles. And then occasionally we■ll
get a groundman on a crew. Most groundman positions
within Avista are put on our conduit crews
or our underground crews. So you won't see a lot of
overhead time working on poles. But you will be doing a lot of our distribution
system, underground. Because, as you know,
majority of our system will be transforming
to underground. It's kind of the way,
way of the future, right? It's a lot safer,
more reliable. Deer Park. Next question. Is having your CDL a
requirement for being a lineman? Yes, 100%. Yeah. I don't know the weight, to be
completely honest with you, but, we drive commercial vehicles. I think it's anything
above 26,000 pounds. Don't quote me on that. But yeah,
you have to add your Class A CDL to drive a lot of the vehicles
that we do. East Valley. But you said you need a CDL. Do you have to go
to a lineman school for that, or can you get to outside of that? You can get it outside. I went through a local school
here in Spokane quite some time ago. But the benefit to line school is that they will provide you
with sectioned off
time for a class for your CDL, and you will get your CDL
through that line school. But no, it's not a requirement. You can go to any truck
driving school wherever you're from
and get your CDL. How much is it for Line School? I honestly don't know, man. I think it all depends on
where you go. I know
it can range anywhere from... well it■s a lot more expensive
now, right? I think you can range anywhere from like $9000
all the way up to $20,000. So it gets pretty expensive. But the benefit of that is you do part of that tuition fee is
your CDL and it is your tools. So you'll get outfitted
with your climbing gear, your belt, your gas and all your hand tools
to go along with that. Deer Park. What made you want
to start working for Avista? As far as me living in Spokane, the Pacific
Northwest in general, I got all my family here. And Avista is the name, the biggest name
for power in this area. Knowing that
I wanted to be a lineman and still live in Spokane,
we'll just north of Spokane, my options were limited, right? We got a couple local utilities
in the area. Whether it be Avista,
Inland Power, Modern, Vera. So there's a few. Right.
Kootenai, if you're in Idaho. But Avista is the largest
and the biggest, and that's, that's where I went for. And I got lucky enough to get it
on my first try. East Valley. How would you compare your job
to same job in other companies like is Avista better? I'm biased. Right?
Because I work for Avista. I think it's a great company
to work for. But I can't really
speak on that. I did my apprenticeship time
here, and I topped out here. I can't talk
bad about any other utility. I think being a lineman
is the coolest job in the world, and I'm sure it's just as good
anywhere else you go, right? Deer Park.
Where do you have to live in order to work for Avista
or a company, similar line of work,
because I know that my dad works fairly far away, but it's just within the distance
threshold of his work. So would I have to move from
Deer Park or Clayton or somewhere else
to work at Avista? You know,
that's a good question. So, being Avista
is a big company, we have multiple docks or sites throughout our service
territory. Me being a lineman personally,
I can live within 25 miles or 30 minutes,
whichever comes first, right, of my work location,
which I work in Spokane. So our headquarters is located
right off of mission. And I have to be within 25 miles of my doorstep
or 30 minutes drive time. And they do that
for the sole reason, as being a lineman,
we take a lot of trouble calls. Customers always come first
when it comes to that. So we want to get the power back
on to our customers in a timely manner,
and that's why they require that certain length. You can work away from your,
your local yard. But as far as Avista goes,
if you work in Deer Park and you live in Clayton,
you're totally fine, right? So, it's just kind of finding
that threshold of where you can live compared
to where you want to work. I think we have time for
maybe two more questions. So East Valley,
what's your next question? What kind of tools do
you have there? Like specific to the line trade? There's a lot. As far as our hand tools
go that we carry on our belts when we're climbing a pole. It's pretty simple, right? Carry like some...., some pliers, screwdriver,
a knife to skin wire. Pretty simple stuff. A hammer. But there's hundreds and hundreds of tools
that make our jobs easier. Milwaukee's kind of leading
the way on all that stuff right now
for our battery power tools. But we have cutters that'll cut through wire
the size of your wrist. I mean, imagine
doing that by hand. It kind of sucks, right? There's there's a ton of different tools out there
for our trade specific. You just kind of got, got to
start doing the research on it. And being that it is line work, the tools
are all very expensive. So, back to being a perk
on working for Avista or a local utility,
because they provide, excuse me, all those
tools for you. Deer Park. Do working at certain docks
pay more in different areas? No it does not. So, I work through local
77, work for Avista, but I'm under local 77th contract
and they determine our wages. It's all negotiated through the different
utilities in the area. But, so I can work in Deer
Park, Spokane, wherever it may be as a lineman. And all those wages
are the same. But I still have the option
to move up. Right? If I don't want to be
a lineman forever, I want to be a serviceman,
let's say, or a foreman. With those increased
responsibilities, you get an increased wage,
right? But as far as working
between the different docks within the company,
the wages are the same for a lineman position. Thank you so much. I think we
are at the end of today's event. I'd like to ask Tyler,
is there anything else you'd like to share
with our student guests about lineman careers
that you think is important that we didn't cover
during the Q&A session? Um...yeah. Specifically for any of you guys that are interested
in this career path, Avista does offer some pretty
cool student opportunities. I'm not sure
if it's dependent on school, to be completely honest. I didn't do much research on it,
but we have a lot of guys in their junior/
senior years of high school that will come and do ride
alongs with the line crews. Because it's cool to, you know,
think you want to be a lineman and you think you have
a pretty good idea of the trade, but until you actually get out
here and experience it, it may not be something
you want to do. So I encourage you guys
to get all your teachers or faculty that can somehow
collaborate that with Avista. But we do offer ride alongs
for high school students, and it's a pretty
cool experience for you guys. What a great opportunity. Thank you again so much, Tyler,
for all of this information and for the time you've shared
with us today. And for sharing with the students
so much valuable, important and interesting information
about lineman careers. I think it's probably fair
to say that we all learned
quite a bit today. We had great questions
from our two schools. So thank you so much. So thank you to Matt
Wallblom and the students from Deer Park High School
today. And also Mike May
and the students from East Valley High School
for joining us for this event. And I hope
that you found this session very interesting
and informative, and that especially
what you learned today might help you
to make the decision whether or not a lineman
career is the right fit for you. And that concludes this Career Explore Northwest Live event.
