Consumerism`s reproductive system: a brawny deliverance of

Jocelyn Salinas learns
about manufacturing
on the factory foor
C
onsumerism’s reproductive system: a brawny deliverance of
repetition and accuracy, the paper doll technique perfected
by 26 punch presses baring grease-stained teeth that crunch
into coils of steel unrolling like Scotch tape — chomp,
chomp, chomp — only to spit out necessary forgettables:
refrigerator door hinges, oven brackets, oven doors. One mighty beast
that could dwarf a two-story home weighs 1,100 tons or roughly 150
elephants. It shakes the foor with each bite.
At a 140,000-square-foot plant dotting Preston Highway’s industrial
plains, products enter the world efciently. It’s called nth/works, as in
precision (the company’s former name was Precision Tool and Die and
Machine Co.) to the nth degree. Say it, and the roof of your mouth
mousetraps the syllable. Unusual name aside, 300 workers manipulate
metal on two shifts, fve days a week, assembling parts for General
Electric and Toyota.
60 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 7.13
Since September, fve Jefersontown High School students in bright
orange T-shirts with the word APPRENTICE spanning their shoulder
blades have spent weekday afternoons on the factory foor. Tey’re here
as part of a new program nth/works devised to recruit energetic, skilled
young workers.
Seventeen-year-old Jocelyn Salinas is one.
Delicate white rose earrings in her lobes, a tape measure at her hip,
wrenches in her back jeans pocket, she concentrates on a square piece of
steel. It’s a warm May afternoon. Fans spin 80-degree air blowing in from
open doors.
Seven and a half inches minus three and three quarters, she computes
silently.
Salinas subtracts the width of a wheel in an attempt to center it onto
the steel plate. Eventually, she’ll weld it to the bottom of a cart that will
haul equipment around the factory foor. Upon high school graduation,
level since World War II. Sixteen percent of Americans ages 16 to 24 are
out of work, according to the Center for American Progress, a research
and advocacy group based in Washington D.C. In Jeferson County, the
unemployment rate for 16- to 24-year-olds is two to three times that
of the 40- and 50-something workers. Of the young people who are
employed, many take positions they’re overqualifed for. Somewhere a
philosophy major just flled out an application at Walmart or Applebee’s.
Tose jobs generally pay less than or about $20,000 a year.
Pop over to manufacturing? Entry level isn’t much greater, about
$25,000 a year. But complete some on-the-job training or community
college courses and you could earn about $40,000. Get your associate’s
in applied science? Maybe $50,000. Complete a four-year degree in
engineering? You’re talking $70,000 plus.
Inexperienced long haul truckers can earn close to $40,000. An
electrician can enter a union apprenticeship and make a little less than
$30,000 to start. After fve years of training that paycheck will likely
double. Tese are recession-era jobs projected to increase. But interest
seems absent.
One morning sitting at a conference table at Jefersontown High
School, the fve nth/works apprentices unanimously agree: teenagers
resist the blue-collar professions now being vacated by Baby Boomers.
“Tey’re lazy,” says Emily Holbert, a senior with long blond hair.
“Honestly, you want my opinion?” ofers Geof Tomes, a senior with
a shaved head, thick sideburns and a brillo pad goatee. His whole family
has worked in manufacturing. “I think people are brainwashed into, like,
you’re not going to make something of yourself unless you go to college.”
Everyone nods.
“I’ve learned that is completely wrong because I try to explain to
some of my friends that want to be a lawyer, I say, ‘Ok, think about this.
When you’re sitting in your ofce,’” he pauses. “Somebody had to build
that. And that person’s like me. Nobody in that feld would have what
they have if it weren’t for people like me.”
O
nth/works has guaranteed her and the other apprentices a job should
they want it. It will be entry level. But in a few years, as she completes
training and earns industry certifcations, she could make $40,000,
maybe $50,000 with overtime. Tis at an age when many of her collegegoing peers will face huge debt.
Out of the dozens of Jefersontown High kids who applied for this
apprenticeship, Salinas was among the few chosen. Sure, it’s blue-collar
work, a phrase often reduced to a euphemism for dull, manual labor; the
best alternative for the lesser of mind. Tat’s not how Salinas sees it. She
gets frustrated talking about it.
“You’ll spend $50,000 going to college,” she says. “And you’ll be in
debt until you’re 70 or later. You’ll have trouble paying it of with interest
and all of that. I can do this. And get paid for what I love doing. It’s a
career.”
Te percentage of teens and young adults who hold jobs is at its lowest
pen a welding textbook, and it’s likely to frazzle the non-scientifc
mind: electrode wire diameters, inverter voltage, chemical
compositions, inert gases. Tere’s a lot to learn. Seriously, page
482, question 10:
“What weld time is required to obtain a class ‘B’ weld when resistance
spot welding a 0.036” (0.91mm) piece to a .090” (2.29mm) piece?”
Translation, please?
Such knowledge once stirred reverence. James Stone is the director
of the National Research Center for Career and Technical Education
based at the University of Louisville. Back in the Middle Ages, he notes,
craftsmen were honored. Membership into the masons or carpentry
guild signaled high social status. And in Europe, some of that respect
for manufacturing, construction remains. A tool and die maker in
Switzerland is considered a professional.
“We don’t honor work in this country,” Stone says. “We honor people
who can get rich quick.”
A generalization, yes, but one that’s hard to argue with. With great
wealth comes celebrity, praise. More than that cultural critique, some
two dozen people interviewed for this story say the plight of blue-collar
work has sufered from this country’s “college for all” mantra.
“We have this thing that if you’re a college graduate, you’re so much
superior to everybody,” says Metro councilman Stuart Benson, who
taught welding and machining for 28 years. He’s quick to add that for
many young folks college leads to great prosperity, fulfllment.
“But nobody’s superior to anybody,” Benson says.” If you’ve got a job,
you’re important.”
Tat’s a nice sentiment. But the blue-collar stigma won’t shed
easily. And the rhetoric can be confusing. For instance, on one hand,
Mayor Greg Fischer and Greater Louisville Inc., the city’s chamber of
commerce, want Louisville to emerge as a manufacturing hub. Tey
often tout the good-paying jobs that require less than a four-year
degree. But Louisville’s high-profle 55,000 Degrees initiative, aimed at
improving college completion, focuses primarily on the attainment of
bachelor’s degrees.
7.13 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 61
A 2012 Georgetown University Public Policy Institute report shows 29
million jobs paying a middle-class wage — more than $35,000 — exist
in this country and don’t require a bachelor’s degree. Nearly half, instead,
demand an associate’s degree or occupational certifcate, education that
used to fall under so-called vocational training, now dubbed career and
technical education or CTE.
Tat vocabulary swap occurred in 2006 with the reauthorization of
a federal law named after Carl D. Perkins (a Kentucky congressman)
that sets aside funds for CTE. It signals an efort to rebrand, shed the
trenchant image of lazy kids getting tossed to voc ed after classroom
failures. “Traditionally, vocational education has been for those kids.
Still is, whether we call it vocational or career and technical,” Stone says.
“Oh, yes, philosophically we think it’s a great idea, but my kid’s going to
college. Tat’s just so deep.”
Te manufacturing industry fghts the same battle. According to
the Manufacturing Institute, 79 percent of Americans feel a strong
manufacturing base should be a national priority. But two-thirds of
parents would encourage their kids to avoid seeking manufacturing
jobs. Last year at Jeferson County Community and Technical College,
Salinas heads to her gray Toyota pickup that wears a metal back
bumper she welded. Te truck rattles to a start. She rolls down her
window, pops her left elbow out and heads toward Preston Highway, the
wind rufing a few curls that have escaped their ponytail. She has just
two weeks left in high school.
Don’t you worry, don’t you worry child. See heaven has a place for you… a
male singer growls from her radio speakers.
A few years ago, Salinas thought she’d become a veterinarian. But that
posed daunting collegiate and post-collegiate expenses. She loves art, too.
But quickly tired of classes. “I don’t like drawing vases all day,” she says.
Don’t you worry, don’t you worry child. See heaven has a place for you…
Fickle likes and dislikes defne the teenage years. But Salinas feels
confdent she’s found her niche in manufacturing. She enjoys leaving
work with a bit of sweat on her neck, fngers blackened.
“I never played with dolls,” she says. “I was a mud kid.”
Don’t you worry, don’t you worry, child. See heaven’s got a place for you …
“Tere’s always a demand for people (in) manufacturing,” she
continues. “Everyone says, ‘Oh, it’s going overseas.’ We’re letting them go
overseas, not taking advantage of opportunities.”
“Traditionally, vocational education has been for those kids. Oh, yes, philosophically
we think it’s a great idea, but my kid’s going to college. That’s just so deep.”
— James Stone, director, National Research Center for Career and Technical Education
students chose health majors (another rapidly growing feld with
the potential for good pay) over the construction, machine tool and
engineering programs by three to one.
Part of this challenge stems from manufacturing’s instability. Every
time the economy sours, news vans inevitably line up outside the local
factory to report on mass layofs. When it improves, press releases
celebrating jobs fy out. “Manufacturing isn’t dying,” says Ken Carroll,
president of the Foundation for Kentucky Industry. “It’s changing.
Evolving.” He goes on to use, perhaps, the buzziest term in industry at
the moment — “advanced manufacturing.”
Manufacturing has matured since the era of one worker screwing in
a bolt 400 times a day. Computers and robots, for better or worse, now
tackle much of the work. Te modern manufacturer must know how
to fx and operate robots, how to utilize computer software to design
equipment. Still, the word’s also rooted in marketing.
James Reddish with Greater Louisville Inc. works closely with area
manufacturers who want the image polished. “It’s safe,” he says. “It’s not
1950s Pittsburgh. How do we make it an area where people see value
and want to go?”
W
alk into Jefersontown High School and the clanging of metal
chimes just of to the right. Te school has arguably the
district’s strongest engineering and manufacturing programs.
It’s about 11 in the morning. In the school’s expansive machine tech
room, erratic blue and orange light shows project onto walls and gas
tanks. Sparks fy. Electricity scratches at the air.
When the clock hits noon, Salinas sets down her welding torch, leans
back from a V-shaped joint she’s trying to perfect, lifts her red welding
hat and heads to work.
As an nth/works apprentice, students go to school half the day, then
spend four hours at the plant. She walks past the lunchroom packed with
squealing teens. Friends will have to wait until this evening.
She credits her parents, originally from Mexico, as passing down a
strong work ethic. Her dad’s built his own contracting business. “I’m
more of a hands-on person because of him,” she says.
It’s a short fve-minute walk home. Salinas already has her steel-toed
boots on. After sliding into her nth/works T-shirt, she grabs beans and
rice that her mom, who works as a baker at Walmart, has packed for her.
62 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 7.13
Salinas is entering manufacturing at a boomerang moment. Jobs are
returning, though modestly. High fuel costs and companies not wanting
to lose proprietary secrets to China or Mexico have inspired the trend.
A recent Washington Post article reported that since January 2010, the
United States has added 520,000 manufacturing jobs, a respectable
number, but an estimated six million manufacturing jobs were lost
between 2000 and 2009.
Locally, the industry’s showing promise. Some 6,500 manufacturing
jobs have been added to the Louisville area in the last year, a 9 percent
increase over the previous year. Te city landed second on a list of
manufacturing “boom towns.”
At General Electric’s Appliance Park, three new assembly lines produce
energy-efcient water heaters, refrigerators and front-load washers. New
products made by 3,000 newly hired local men and women, bringing the
total number of workers up to 6,000. But in the early ’70s, Appliance
Park bustled with 23,000 workers.
Over the last few years, another major employer, Ford, also expanded,
investing $600 million in its Louisville Assembly Plant, adding 1,700
workers and relocating about 1,000 more from other shuttered Ford
operations. It’s tough, though. Cheap labor overseas has squeezed wages
here. Te entry-level assembly line worker who could support a family in
the 1950s would have to do so now at anywhere between $12 to $15 an
hour. But especially at the smaller manufacturers, like nth/works, where
a range of jobs exist — not just an assembly line worker and the people
who fx malfunctioning machines — there’s opportunity to move up.
As Salinas nears the plant, she rolls past Daymar and Brown-Mackie,
two for-proft colleges. She fgures if she hadn’t found nth/works, she
would probably go to JCTC. But she’s not sure what she’d study. About
25 percent of JCTC’s students don’t have specifc goals in mind. Tat
aimlessness often precedes dropping out. Close to 70 percent of JCTC
students who enroll fail to complete a two-year program within three
years. (A large number of part-time students may contribute to that.)
Salinas parks her truck on a patch of rough grass and punches in an
employee code.
As she enters the plant, keys jangling from a hook on her jeans, she’s
un-phased by the robust, arrogant greeting of machines. It intimidated
her at frst, especially after a safety video showed a frozen piece of meat
obliterated in a die machine. Now, it’s cool. Tere have been times when,
welding helmet on, shoulders squared over a piece of steel, torch spraying
its electric arc, she catches her co-workers of guard. “Tey’re like, ‘Hey,
you, can you weld this?’ And then they’re like, ‘Yo, you’re a chick? Can
you do this?’ I’m like, ‘Yes, I know what I’m doing,’” she says with a
laugh.
It will take a lot more teens like Jocelyn Salinas to fll what many
manufacturers have deemed a “skills gap.” Simply put, manufacturers
can’t fnd people who know or want to operate the computer-controlled
machinery of the day.
About six years ago, the Kentucky Community and Technical College
System released a doomsday-titled report, “In the Eye of the Storm:
Confronting Kentucky’s Looming Workforce Crisis.” It surveyed dozens
of CEOs from across the state.
When asked if they anticipate having enough qualifed trade/
technically skilled candidates to draw from in the next 18 months, 92
percent answered no.
Tat’s why Tom Hudson, nth/works CEO, created the apprenticeship
for teens. Basic skills, he says, disappeared over the last three decades as
jobs drifted ofshore.
“It’s not that easy. You just don’t turn a switch here,” Hudson says.
“Tere’s knowledge that’s been lost over time. “
His apprenticeship is based on a German model that embeds
workplace learning in the school day. (In Germany, though, kids are
tracked into these programs by the tenth grade depending on how well
they perform on academic tests.)
In Georgetown, Ky., Toyota runs a similar program for high school
graduates, combining on-the-job training with college coursework.
In order to comply with child labor laws, nth/works had to limit
hours and create an educational rotation. Students and parents had to
sign hazard waivers. It’s a factory, after all. One afternoon, Geof Tomes
pulls up his sleeve to show red biceps, a side efect of not wearing the
right clothes while welding. Tat electric arc burns skin like sun at the
beach. Jenna Kidwell’s orange T-shirt bears tiny, red sutures where sparks
burned a hole through it.
Salinas often endures achy arms, sore feet. Still, when she leaves, she’s
fulflled. On this afternoon, she and a mentor fddled with a drilling
machine, stabbing holes into a steel plate. It’s for that cart she’s been
working on for days. At four in the afternoon, she punches out and
picks up her brother from wrestling practice. She’s tried to get him into
welding.
“He’s a pretty boy,” she says, teasing. “He doesn’t like to get dirty.”
W
hack!
Marcus McCormick slams his hammer into a door hinge on
a powder-blue cupboard.
Shoot, he thinks.
He likes to break things with one clean hit.
Whack! Te door clings.
Sore forearms be damned. Whack! Whack! Whack! Whack! Te door
fnally collapses.
It’s late morning. McCormick wears a loose Messer Construction
gray polo over his compact frame. He’s on demolition duty at Kosair
Children’s Hospital, where a major renovation is underway. Insulation
lies in heaps. Patches of remaining light blue walls scab over exposed
wiring. For two days now the 23-year-old has been slinging hammers
in the building’s basement. Underneath his hard hat, drowsiness weighs
down his eyelids.
McCormick rises at 6 a.m., then catches the 6:41 bus from his mom’s
place on West Muhammad Ali Boulevard, just him, the other early birds
and R&B through his headphones.
No music down here. Only the screeching of a saw slicing through
old bathroom fxtures, a fan’s hum and the percussive thump of
sledgehammers pulverizing drywall. It collects like crumbs in
McCormick’s nostrils and throat. Sneezing fts hit later in the day. But he
doesn’t mind.
He never thought he’d work for a company like Messer, a commercial
construction company behind multimillion-dollar projects in fve states.
Really, he never thought about working in construction or the skilled
trades at all.
Ten last year a friend started “beating Youth Build in my head.” Te
nonproft for low-income 18- to 24-year-olds sits on an ever-expanding
lot in Smoketown. Every year Youth Build accepts 35 students. In less
than a year, McCormick earned a GED, mastered the basics of carpentry,
HVAC, electrical, plumbing and landscaping. Since 2001, the program
has graduated more than 300 participants, with 86 percent of students
obtaining a GED and/or vocational training certifcate.
Forest Aalderink, Youth Build’s training and construction coordinator,
says as the housing market has picked up, more construction crews have
contacted him, hungry for skilled workers. “More than we have to give,”
he says.
At frst, McCormick, like a lot of Youth Build kids, hesitated at the
thought of construction. It was unfamiliar. Growing up in the nowdefunct Iroquois housing projects, he never knew anyone in the industry.
“A lot of what we get are students who’ve been exposed to little
mom and pop operations,” Aalderink says. “Tere’s nothing wrong
with that. Tere’s a good valuable spot for that in the market. But they
need to be exposed to hospital construction, bridge construction, jobs
that have 401(k)s ... (the) serious, industrial, heavy commercial side of
construction.”
Much of the industry that once flled swaths of land in neighborhoods
like Park Hill now sit vacant, wilting, the unfortunate end to an
economic daisy chain: Plants downsized, then closed or moved to
cheaper locales. Jobs became scarce. Urban neighborhoods packed
with middle class families lost them. For young, low-income AfricanAmericans, like McCormick, unemployment stings. Just 9 percent of
poor, black teens in this country have jobs. Te employment rate for
middle-income white teens whose families earn $75,000-$100,000
stands at 41 percent.
Michael Gritton, with KentuckianaWorks, says businesses feel
frustrated as well.
“You can’t be in a meeting with an employer without them bemoaning
the state of K-12 education, the lack of technical education,” he says. “It
comes up in every meeting you’re in.”
While other Kentucky counties have retained vocational centers, in
the early ’90s JCPS closed all eight in the district, folding the programs
into existing high schools.
McCormick had carpentry in high school — welding, too. But he
rarely attended. “I would cut those classes and get high or whatever,” he
says. “I didn’t give it a chance.” He eventually dropped out of Iroquois
High School completely.
On break now, McCormick walks across the street to a hot dog stand.
He orders two turkey dogs and sits on a bench inside. Hunched over, a
tattoo of the name GEORGIA slips out from behind his collar.
Tere was a “gang of 10 of us,” he says about his family. When it came
to high school, nothing could have kept him in. He loved basketball.
His freshman year he earned good grades. But distractions tugged at him
just before 10th grade. “I was almost put out that summer because my
momma didn’t pay the bills,” he says. “It was just too much stuf that I
was thinking about that I shouldn’t even have been thinking about as a
child.”
His dad was in jail. Cupboards were bare. It was around this time his
attitude toward education changed.
“Like, dang, I am growing up. School ain’t where it’s at right now to
help feed my brothers.” McCormick started selling drugs, stealing purses,
breaking into homes. “Doing all the negative things I shouldn’t have
been doing in the frst place.”
When McCormick was 16, his 15- and 13-year-old brothers started
skipping school. Child Protective Services got involved. Tey were taken
out of the home. McCormick balls up the foil from one hot dog as he
remembers this time. “When that happened I just lost it,” he says.
McCormick, in his school-aged days, would have fallen into that “at
risk” category, a group that’s nearly always poor, often minority and
tends to enter school below grade level in math and reading. JCPS has
more at-risk youth than any other district in Kentucky. It’s graduation
rate, 67 percent, remains below the state average, despite some recent
gains.
7.13 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 63
Before McCormick heads back to work, he buys a cigarette from a coworker for his last few minutes of break time.
“It’s not a dream job,” he says. “But it’s a goal for me to have a good
paying job. Not a minimum-wage job.”
He’s grown to appreciate his new skill. Te walls he tears down make
way for stronger ones. Tose he builds secure people. Some days, if
he’s near downtown, he’ll ride past a house on Hancock Street that he
worked on. Just a glimpse and pride swells.
McCormick’s not sure he’ll stick with construction. But there’s money
in it if he does. With some more schooling and experience, he could
ascend to construction supervisor, a job that boasts a $50,000 salary.
When asked what would encourage more young folks into skilled
trades, he pauses for a moment. A lot of kids don’t listen to adults, he
fgures.
“Probably take people like me,” he says.
D
In 2008, former superintendent Sheldon Berman introduced careerthemed high schools as a way to improve graduation rates. Te idea
being, hook kids foundering to see a purpose in school.
Fifteen high schools now ofer students a variety of majors they’re
encouraged to choose from and complete at least three classes in. Te
career themes include engineering, manufacturing, health, hospitality
and tourism. Business management and administration have proven
the most popular, with close to 10,000 high school students enrolled.
Manufacturing and construction have about 400 students enrolled in
each.
Brian Shumate helped construct the career-theme pathways, as he
calls them, because students can, if they stick with it, earn industry
certifcations upon graduation. Tat can lead to a job right out of high
school.
“We know that kids, if they’re in a pathway that’s of interest to them
… have a better shot of graduating on time,” Shumate says. “Teir
attendance is better. Everything is better.”
Students who successfully complete three courses in their career or
technical classes, have a 98 percent graduation rate according to the
Kentucky Department of Education.
But Keith Look, principal at the Academy at Shawnee, says our
system’s priorities ultimately align more with the classroom than career.
If a student tests poorly, that student will likely get yanked from career
and tech time.
“Because these schools are of an academic, college-prep nature,” he
says, “the ‘good with his hands’ kid, if they’re behind in reading or math,
we have a limited amount of time to get that student’s skills up. So where
do we take you out of? Well, we don’t take you out of reading and math.”
64 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 7.13
ressed in a camoufage T-shirt and jeans, J.D. Chesser’s thin arms
clutch a steering wheel the size of a large pizza. His leg forms
a right angle as he steps on the gas of the Kenworth semi that
grunts to a start, air hissing into its brakes.
“You ready?” asks Ed Stephens, an instructor with Truck America
Training, clipboard on lap in the passenger seat.
“Yup,” Chesser replies.
Te truck bounces of the 17-acre gravel lot, the empty white trailer
boasting Truck America’s slogan in red lettering: “Run with the Big
Dogs.” American and bald eagle fags wave farewell in the late May
breeze.
As he slowly rolls through Shepherdsville toward the highway, a horse
farm glides by on the right. Tirteen gears lie in wait under his grip.
He knows this complex H-pattern clutch by heart, but still struggles
in the low gears, those slow, lazy speeds. He grinds a few, then a few
more, a noise similar to silverware in a blender. Te words STUDENT
DRIVER plaster the front bumper. Tis is only his second day in the
driver’s seat.
At 21 years old, Chesser is one of Truck America’s youngest students
in months. He comes as a legacy. His dad delivered fuel to the school
for more than a decade. His uncle is also a driver. “I don’t think young
people these days really want to get up in a truck,” Chesser says. “Just
seems like they want to go into computer design and all that.”
Chesser has been “turning wrenches” (fxing trucks) for years. But he’s
been making about $12 an hour, or about $25,000 a year. He fgures if
he can put in at least 50 hours per week, covering about 2,000 miles,
he’ll make upwards of $40,000 as a trucker.
Underneath crisp early morning sunshine, Chesser pulls onto
Interstate 65. He swivels his head left, right, left, right, constantly
checking both side mirrors. Eighteen-wheeled trailers so easily sway, like
dancer’s hips back and forth, into other lanes.
A can of Coke digested, his Apollo Oil baseball hat tipped back, a
pack of Marlboros lodged in a storage bin, he’s more comfortable than
most newcomers at guiding the 80,000-pound Kenworth through the
interstate trafc.
“Smooth as silk, brother,” Mike Schrader roots from the back of the
cab. Te 59-year-old in a USA T-shirt and glasses with fipped up sun
lenses, is also a student at Truck America. Recently, the former realtor,
found himself in need of work. He represents Truck America’s more
typical student these days: about 40 to 60 years old and looking for a
second career.
“What I am training right now are people who’ve been displaced, out
of factories and are trying to fnd an income that is close to what they
were making before … with a small amount of training and not two
years associate’s degree or whatever,” says Debbie Carter, who started
Truck America Training 13 years ago.
A decade ago, Carter, a tall, tan, blonde with a gold cross at her neck
and sandaled feet, had plenty of students in their 20s and early 30s. She
also had up to 40 students enrolled per week. Now, she’s lucky to get half
that every few weeks.
Cost may be a factor. Te three-week training costs $4,600. If a
student isn’t lucky enough to receive a grant from KentuckianaWorks,
then Carter says they’ll have to turn to the bank of “mom and dad.” In
the last few years, banks have curbed giving loans for short, vocational
training. (Some trucking companies do ofer tuition reimbursement.)
One morning while sitting at outdoor picnic tables with Chesser
and other students, Carter, who speaks with a heavy Southern drawl,
throws a manicured hand in the air, riled about the push towards college,
unemployment numbers and the fact that seats sit empty at her school.
“Everything you consume everyday is moved by a truck. Te cofee
I’m drinking was moved by a truck,” she says clutching a mug. “Te beer
you drink on the weekends was moved by a truck.”
But just as with manufacturing and skilled trades, society’s demoted
trucking to low-class, gritty status.
“I think every time they interview someone on TV they go fnd the
toothless wonder at the truck stop and then people depict that that’s
what all truck drivers look like,” Carter says. “Te average truck driver is
a professional person making a decent income, supporting their family.”
Chesser approaches a Bullitt County truck stop and Stephens, a
42-year trucking veteran, directs him to pull of for a bathroom break.
A plaid shirt tucked neatly into belted khakis, Stephens fghts the
stereotype. Having worked mostly for union trucking companies, the
Prospect resident says he retired with a $100,000 salary. “Te longest
streak I was ever out of work was three weeks,” he says.
Te economy can slow trucking’s vitality. But the Bureau of Labor
Statistics projects that employment for heavy and tractor-trailer truck
drivers will grow by 21 percent from 2010 to 2020, faster than average
for all occupations.
As the students disappear into the truck stop’s maze of sodas and
snacks, other drivers milling about show a lack of youth. In a parked
red truck, a professorial-looking bald man peers over reading glasses,
glancing up from a book he’s reading. Heads of gray along with soft,
middle-aged midsections mount and dismount from their bulky, steel
chariots, like kids on a carousel.
Many longtime drivers face retirement. Carter says that’s one reason
companies are “screaming” for drivers. Experience no longer needed.
“Because there is a driver shortage,” she says, “they’re taking them right
out my backdoor.”
Requirements are minimal: 21 years old, no criminal record, pass a
test that shows you have eighth grade math and reading skills.
Still, it’s a challenge to recruit drivers. Not even an endorsement from
the mayor helps.
Tis past October, Mayor Fischer and KentuckianaWorks announced
the Registered American Moving Professionals program (RAMP). If
drivers qualifed (background checks, GED or diploma, drug tests, etc.)
a federal grant paid for two months of training that would result in a
promised job as a moving professional. Te wage guaranteed? Around
$40,000 with benefts. At a press conference, Gritton felt comfortable
assuring the media that by the end of May, 100 graduates from the
Louisville region would be on the road hauling families’ furniture.
Te program will graduate 15, only four younger than 30. Gritton
thought he’d get thousands of applications. Only a few hundred applied,
this despite radio ads and social media campaigns.
Trucking isn’t easy. Tires pop. Mechanical systems fail. If you drive a
fat bed, you have to secure your own load with chains and straps. Most
beginning drivers will spend six months on the road.
“It isn’t just about pay when it comes to jobs,” Gritton refects.
Chesser knows all of this. But he’s single and adventurous. And he
loves trucks. Te screen saver on his iPhone is a Peterbilt 359 that he’d
like to drive someday. When showing it to a fellow student, he brags that
at night “it lights up like a Christmas tree.”
With Schrader now at the wheel, Chesser sits in the back sipping a
Coke and scrolling through his phone. He’s on Maverick Transportation’s
website, the company that he hopes to work for in a few weeks.
“Depending on division, you will start out earning between 33
cents and 40 cents per mile,” he reads. “Six cent per mile raise after six
months.”
He smiles. Chesser’s ready to make some money.
J.D. Chesser (also pictured left)
gets comfortable in the driver’s
seat of a semi.
O
n a muggy June morning, Salinas makes her way to Broadbent
Arena at the fairgrounds. Her brown hair with blond highlights
cascades down her back. Turquoise and gold earrings dangle
near the tassel that hangs from her white graduation cap. Work boots
at home, she walks in elegant, open-toe black heels, turquoise toenails
peeking out. She heads to the seventh of eight rows of folding chairs
located underneath harsh fuorescent lights. Hundreds of proud parents,
some teary eyed, fll the arena’s red and blue seats to watch as the
Jefersontown High School class of 2013 graduates.
Speakers applaud the record number of students receiving industry
credentials, as well as the seniors who participated in the nth/works
apprenticeship.
Te district is hoping three more manufacturing companies will soon
ofer similar apprenticeships.
Salinas plans on continuing her work with nth/works post-graduation.
No more four-hour days, though. She’ll punch in at 5:30 am. Lunch will
last 30 minutes. Eventually, she may enter a union apprenticeship with
the goal of getting her journeyman’s card. Her welding teacher has told
her that big construction projects must hire 13 percent minority and
female workers.
“I’m marketable to everyone,” she says pragmatically.
At 10:05 her name echoes — Escarlett Jocelyn Salinas. She walks
across the stage, shakes hands with the principal, grabs the leather folder
that will hold her diploma. As the ceremony draws to a close, tassels shift
from left to right. Caps fy into the air. All around Salinas, cheers erupt.
Adulthood has arrived, an intoxicating blend of freedom and unknowns.
But for Salinas, the future is clear. After a week of graduation parties, it’s
back to work.
7.13 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 65