Day In The Life of a Lineman

[Music] everybody's pal just not everybody's willing to go out and do the stuff that we do well there's definitely need for people working the trades it seems like everybody nowadays wants to stay inside these computer stuff well without power you can't have your computers and everything it's more than a job it's a definite different lifestyle I mean any time of day or night phone rings put your stuff on come on let's go get the lights back come on a daily basis 8:00 to 4:30 just spoke up services you know line maintenance replaced poles there's always working if you don't everyday and you never know what's gonna be going on for one day the knife serves its interests are not going to do the same with that thing every single day it's always different scenery different locations and so you're gonna come in the mornings the league is gonna come out give your job just leave the load on the truck this is what materials we need we'll load up we'll get out here have us a tailgate talk about what we got to do for the day till outer Hauser's what things you need to watch out for first job we had a amperage problem low problem we had to work on some voltage so we switched one feed to another feed to balance the load out so we had customers out they took our outage at 10 o'clock that morning and allotted probably hour in 20 minutes we had everybody back home so we try to work hard and quick as we can but do it the safest way as possible working in the different elements out here in the field you know snow rain when they don't matter when the lights are out we got it so if you want to do this type of work you got to deal with different dishes and just but you can do it it's a very rewarding job the money's not bad you make a good living you just gotta be dedicated do you need to go to a school with some sort time in school they have them in Georgia South Side and Blackstone there's one they're more likely if you do good in that class and that's school and you'll have a job guarantee when you get out of I think going to the climbing training school the great benefit coming to a co-op you have a little knowledge of our work and far as climbing poles and tying in wire a lot more you got to learn but that's a great start you get CPR training certified VDOT traffic control flight your certification if you don't have your CDL you get it while you're in school their class A CDL and their restrictions I learned a lot up there in school but I don't think you're ever going to stop learning in this field I think the schools are good they'll let you know pretty much right from the get-go up is something you think you're gonna enjoy I mean if you don't like climbing poles and being the heat and being the cold then you know that'll let you know before you you know go down that path but also gives you a good knowledge and kind of known what to expect and I started out of the ground and work through and got in the apprenticeship program and I'll pretend four and a half years it's in-house so you do certain things 8,000 hours that you actually do and got the advanced you go from just doing ground work to your first step was actually climbing Nedved ground with poles then you're doing a hot climate hot secondaries then you start getting into the bucket and doing stuff dead in the bucket hot so you you pretty much come on through and do everything once you get your gentleman's card even pretty much you decide you want to move go somewhere find somebody's hiring and you've always got work certainly needs power this job can't be replaced by computers the technology we use goes up thing gets hired but you still need people to train to do this job we had a capacitor bank and obviously to cut out with blown so we had to test to see if it was bad so we just decided you know to try it one time we could didn't know if a bird knocked it out vines rolling the polled I couldn't knocked it out obviously the fuse blown so the capacitors bad and now we've got to get a work order on that so we can change and correct that problem home inspectors come around on our system they inspect poles and if it's they find that it's bad they'll exit out and they'll be on the schedule to be replaced so we roll up there and basically it was it was 85 transformer on it and a secondary underground service to a house we just changed out the pole change the transformer and everything is good it's pretty much routine for us you know there's there's steps to everything we do and if you follow those steps and pay attention fall all the safety rules you know nothing should go wrong I think we have a very good safety program here that's our number one priority is safety you know our motto it's safety first and we make sure whoever gets hired on you know we bring you up the right way and pound safety into your head because it's very important you know everybody wants to go home to their families you got to be a hard worker and be dedicated and take pride in what you do you need to be very knowledgeable about your surroundings you need to most definitely get along with your co-workers because got worked side by side everyday it's just like Fang it'sit's a fun line of work but it's a very serious line of work and you gotta look out for each other that's the main thing if you're on the ground and you got a guy on the bucket then you need to be looking out for him as he as well as I'm looking out for you be right out high school and this the career you want to get into jump into it you know my opinion not everybody's built for college you know here you can go to a lineman school get some hands-on training find out if you want to do this and then once you get hired on with the company you learn a trade it's for life you know it's a career for life and you'll always be set financially I love my job it's hard work it really is you know it's not walk in the park but it's very rewarding you know you can after you're done doing the job you can look up and say alright I did that you know so it's it's a good career there's nothing better than working all night and tired and all that someone comes up to you and thanks you it makes it always get to see what you're doing is helping somebody else their meaning line was a very rewarding job I wouldn't trade it for anything you get to meet a lot of new people you get to travel some and the most rewarding is when you get like someone he's right by see people moving to Holland flicking the light switches on their porches and start that's a good feeling [Music]

Channel: Community Electric Cooperative

Views: 211,553

Rating: 4.9442024 out of 5

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Id: btnwUQwc-DI

Length: 6min 28sec (388 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 13 2019