It’s quiet. Men in khaki-colored shirts and jeans move at an unhurried but efficient pace around a loading dock behind Duke Energy’s Anderson operations center. They don’t talk much, grabbing protective gear or supplies from huge bins full of wires and pipes, much like chefs gathering ingredients for a meal.
Two of the men use a small forklift to pluck a shiny gray transformer from a pile of about a dozen and load it onto the back of a white service truck. If bad weather were expected, there would be several more in the pile. But it’s a warm November day with a clear blue sky, and this transformer will go up on a freshly placed pole to power a new home.
The team that will install the pole just finished a brief 9:30 a.m. meeting where they discussed the day’s tasks. Before that, there’s usually 15 minutes of stretching to warm up their bodies. Lineman Reggie Simmons said they choose all sorts of tunes, from chart-toppers by pop singers Adele and Lourde to ’80s and ’90s hits.
“It’s sort of like Jazzercising,” said Mike Lequire, construction and maintenance supervisor.
It’s easier to plan for the day than for the future in an industry that faces a looming labor shortage. Lequire assembled today’s team. He’s spent 34 years with the company, but keeps the focus away from himself. He’d rather have another lineman answer, and especially likes to test Bryce Thomason, a 21-year-old who’s been on the job just a few months. That age gap between the two men is telling, and it’s a serious problem for the energy industry.
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Working class
The A-, B- and C-class linemen on the crew are locals. They serve 68,000 customers in Anderson County, including small cities like Honea Path. They have a fairly straightforward job this morning. The crew will install a pole and energize a line for a new residence in Townville, about 20 minutes away.
The team includes Jamie Bannister, a poster boy for Duke linemen if there is one. He finished eighth in the world overall out of 255 competitors and fourth in the investor-owned utility division at the International Lineman’s Rodeo competition in October. He loves the job.
Back at home, he’s a C-class lineman, fairly green with much yet to learn. Bannister answers most questions with thoughtful pauses, but doesn’t hesitate to share what he likes about his job. Like his colleagues, he said being outdoors, troubleshooting and the fact that every call is different are favorite parts of the work.
The kinds of everyday skills that are tested for fun at the rodeo, in events such as the 40-foot pole climb and simulated rescues, earn him bragging rights. Yet the conditions under which linemen apply those skills often are not what most people would consider fun.
The bad weather and disasters that keep the rest of us hunkered down at home are the very events that call the linemen out to work. In his 30 years as a lineman, Bruce Cathey said he has missed birthdays and Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations. He slept on the floor of a school library while helping make repairs after Hurricane Hugo hit South Carolina in 1989. He spent 19 days in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina.
“I had no idea if I’d be gone for a week or what,” Cathey said. “Sometimes when you volunteer to go out on a storm or something, you don’t know if you’re going to be back in two days or two weeks, and that can be tough on the family.”
On the job
Three trucks, six men, one pole.
At 11:06 all the necessary machinery and people have converged on the Townville site, a new home construction. Thomason has inspected the area and written out a safety briefing. He reads aloud the date, the address, radio address and frequencies, each team member’s duties and the hazards he’s identified, including pedestrians and bystanders. He has designated himself as 911 caller, and Bannister will call if it turns out Thomason is the one who needs help. Then, everyone signs off, physical proof of a shared understanding.
Ten minutes later, the first truck to roll onto the modest front yard is the large material handler. It’s another 10 minutes before Tim Martin ascends in that truck’s bucket to place rubber insulators along parts of power lines that could get bumped as the pole is placed. The linemen call them “eels,” but they look more like giant macaroni and cheese noodles. Martin moves deftly covering part of one line, then the line above that, until the top line, which has 7,200 volts of electricity running through it. That’s voltage you can hear.
While Martin lays the eels, other men prepared the digger derrick truck to drill the hole for the pole. By 11:36 a roughly 10-foot-long, 2-foot-wide drill bit, or auger, has been in the air for several minutes. Bannister watches the auger as he manipulates it with a remote control about the size of a shoebox strapped to his chest. He drills down, slowly lifts out dirt caked neatly around the center, then flings the dirt off with a quick twist.
Changing times
Backup controls with archaic-looking levers are still located on the truck, but the remote control illustrates the kind of technological advances that have made the job easier over the years. Onboard computers allow crews to quickly pull up underground maps or locate fuse boxes, information that required a call back to the office once upon a time. Innovations like battery-operated wire cutters have had some of the biggest impact on the physicality of the work. Computers simplify tasks, but also change the required skill set. Cathey, 56, said he relies on younger colleagues to help him with computer issues the way he helps them understand the mechanics of building a line.
The linemen staff is also smaller than it used to be, and threatens to shrink drastically because of that age gap, a problem throughout the utility industry. Cathey said the crew of about 17 is about half the size it was when he started 30 years ago. The younger ones are in their 20s. Cathey said he is nearing retirement, and right now his financial advisor is figuring out just when that should be. That morning exercise helps an aging workforce maintain its dexterity, Lequire said.
“I hurt now because of doing repetitive stuff over and over, but these young guys are in a good situation. Because [of technology] they won’t have to go through that first 20 years,” said Cathey, who began his career with Duke just about the time Bannister was born. Every job needs at least one experienced A-class worker like Cathey, Lequire said.
Team work
Even with today’s fairly simple job, there are numerous small steps in between each of the big ones. There’s measuring and more measuring. Once the hole is ready, another truck brings in the pole. Trucks are parked just so and leveled. Stakes are placed and removed, articles of protective gear are donned and removed as people move from one task to another. Engines rumble incessantly.
“If we have a bigger job and things like that, we try to get everything lined up and each person knows what we’re going to do. You’re watching out for each other, but you also know what that man’s doing so you can do what you’ve got to do,” Cathey said.
By 12:15, the transformer that was loaded onto the truck nearly three hours ago is finally hooked to the side of a bucket and hoisted up. Martin drills a few holes into the pole and within minutes has attached the transformer to it. Once the power lines are hooked up, it becomes just another pole, one of thousands that keep the power flowing.
On the way back to the office from Townville, the crew passes miles and miles of power lines, lines they are held responsible for. Thomason, the new guy, said he looks at the world differently since starting the job. He notes differences in technique when he travels out of town, and checks out power lines at traffic lights.
He’s keyed into a crucial part of infrastructure that hums quietly underground and above our heads. To most other drivers, the lines and poles are likely so ubiquitous they’re practically invisible. Even waiting for the light to change, there’s probably no thought about what it takes to make that happen.
