Lineman post 4

    This blog post is going to go deeper into work settings and conditions, pay ranges and employment outlook…

    Being a lineman you need a wide variety of skills like teamwork and customer skills so being able to communicate is key!! In any job you will have to work with people you really don't like and you just have to power through it and keep working on the same team not against. Often work outside sometimes with extreme heat or cold so be ready for that but sometimes inside so just be prepared for any environment. Obviously you will be working around hazardous conditions like cranes setting poles and live power. Let's hope your not afraid of heights because as a apprentice you will need to climb poles 60 ft or higher and later 200 ft+ towers. Your work must be perfect and exact as if it's not your work may be seriously dangerous to others. But don't let any of that scare you let's talk pay, I live in Washington so I will post a chart of the average pay in my area as well as the US average.

Location	Pay Period
		10%	25%	Median	75%	90%
Washington	Hourly	$29.10	$40.01	$44.35	$47.81	$50.29
	Monthly	$5,043	$6,934	$7,686	$8,285	$8,715
	Yearly	$60,519	$83,232	$92,243	$99,429	$104,598

United States	Hourly	$17.60	$24.43	$32.70	$39.73	$47.21
	Monthly	$3,050	$4,234	$5,667	$6,885	$8,181
	Yearly	$36,610	$50,820	$68,010	$82,640	$98,190

Pay looks pretty damn sweet to me, now looks look at employment outlook.

Location	Current employment	Growth over 10 years
		This occupation	All occupations
Washington	1,842	12.9%	16.7%

United States

118,600

11.0%

6.5%

As you can see there are plenty of jobs available, but don't let that make you think that they will hire just anyone because this is a super competitive career to get into.

http://www.picgran.com/edit.php

lineman 3rd post

Source of picture (NBC 4 news)

    All the time there are power outages no matter where you are for any range of reasons from a tree falling on a wire or a fire at an electrical station all of which will demand lineman. Apart from all the other things that makes this not your typical job a lot of the time you are required to travel to sites especially just starting out in a apprenticeship program, for instance according to NBC 4 news

   AEP Ohio is sending 14 line workers to Puerto Rico on Saturday to assist with power restoration efforts. The team will join four storm restoration experts with AEP Ohio, who have been on the ground since early January. Line workers from AEP Ohio’s sister companies will also join the mission.

    You may be told to travel out of state to go work on a site with a range of many other workers for months at a time sometimes, My cousin who is a lineman said that once you finish your apprenticeship then you could start settling down and you can start picking where you want to go for work. Most people that try and get a job as a lineman don't want to travel and end up wasting a lot of time trying to get a job around them and sometimes this takes years, so I'd say suck it up and take the three years you need to take to become a journeyman and travel to where they need you to go. My cousin has a truck and a camper and he's using that at the moment to get to the sites and he just bought a house for his wife and kids because he's just about a journeyman. Don't let this slip you up from becoming a lineman from what I've learned this is a fun profession with helicopters being used to pick tools up and bring them to the top of a tower or hanging from a ladder attached to a helicopter (video is coming next post). Plus the pay is pretty damn good of course.

lineman post 2

 

   

High voltage. 2018. Downtown subway(Julian Cross)

 

 What exactly is a lineman some of you may ask and what do they other than just fix power lines/install them? That is what I will be informing you about in this post!

So a lineman not only climb poles and fix power lines and install them but they also install lines under ground, as well tower work too, they also use a huge variety of heavy equipment like teachers( to dig a trench of course), cable plows to make way for underground cables and a bunch of other fun tools that you won't be using in any other job. Line installers will also do private work as well connecting a line between the power grid and a set house, warehouse or anything else that needs a line connected. They also repair power lines. Say a storm came and knocked out a power line cutting power to 15,000 customers a lineman would be there as fast as possible fixing that so everyone won't have to sleep in the dark. On that note there is a special season called storm season where you may make up to double pay because of the storms!! There are a lot more duties that this profession performs but I think those are the main ones given for a day to day work as a lineman(Wois). I talked to a lineman about his job and he said two quotes one being “identify, Isolate, test and ground” which is what you must do if your installing wire, fixing wire, working on a transmission tower… and the second quote is “look up and live” which makes sense because this is a very dangerous job, messing with enough electricity to kill ten horses in sometimes dangerous conditions (Cross).  The next post will be coming next week, so stick around!!