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Very good idea for a thread, very interesting to hear (see?) everyone's stories.
Zach knows my story pretty well, but for everyone else I'll share. I went to school for Electrical Engineering. While in school I worked an 8 month internship at Bobcat, which is where I met Zach. Got married 2 weeks after graduating college and went to work for Hormel as a maintenance engineer. An opportunity came up to purchase the family farm so the wife and I did that and moved home. I took up climbing wind turbines as it meant I didn't have an hour long one way commute to work everyday. I worked there for not quite two years and ended up at a new windfarm a little farther away. I now work on the balance of plant side of things though, so we take care of basically everything but the towers themselves. Going on about a year and a half at that job currently. We also farm on the side. We raise hogs, cattle and sheep for meat and are also starting to rent ground from my folks for the crops. Lastly, my greatest job is getting to be a father for those who need one. Our 3 kids were adopted out of foster care after nearly a year and a half, we are also currently fostering 5 more.
As far as how I got started wrenching, it was my own stupidity. While I was in college I decided I wanted to get a 7.3L and found and purchased the truck Zach currently runs. It needed a lot when I first got it and I was a poor college student so FTE taught me how to wrench. My time at Hormel was also a great teacher and I learned a lot about wrenching. Climbing towers was very good at teaching me electrical troubleshooting on those poor old worn out towers. Now days with the proper tools and some good information from a place like this and I am willing to tackle about anything that I need to. For me, that's pretty much anything. Much to Zach's annoyance I'm sure, as I usually find a way to rope him in to my projects, haha.
Cool. I worked with Eaton Hydraulics for a number of years. It is how I ended up living in Minnesota. I still live in the city the HQ is in. The driveline products were part of the Truck (I think) division. That corporation got reorganized so many times it made my head spin. Sauer Danfoss bought Eaton Hydraulics only a few months ago. It is weird to see everything repainted from Eaton blue to Danfoss orange.
Nice! Was that a gear, vane, gerotor or piston pump?
I used to do a lot of work with a company out of the cities, SunSource. Wonderful guys, introduced me to a lot of amazing technologies and products.
I have seen and owned black belted galloways, but not red. Pretty cool!!!
Always been a rancher/horse trainer/cattleman. I left that for the "dream" and became a professional trainer of AKC Field Trial Retrievers for about 9 years and owned my own kennel for awhile. Life happened with my business partner, so I left that, went back to horses. Decided to get an "education" and went to EMT and paramedic school in 2001. Worked as a licensed paramedic in San Diego County for Rural Metro and AMR for almost 6 years. I thought that was going to be my end all be all, but it became very hard to make a living in EMS after my divorce and the economy took a dive in 2008-2009. Went back to school, continued ranching and starting colts all the way through grad school. After giving ranching one last college try and getting screwed out of the agreement to lease, I left ranching for good and put my Master of Range Management degree to work for me. That was a good decision until Covid changed all of that. Here I am 2 years later and working as an RV Technician and sometimes diesel mechanic. I work for a very good company and don't plan on going anywhere anytime. My extracurricular activities with training are leading into some private instructing, so I will see where that goes, but it looks like RV tech for the foreseeable future.
I agree OP, great thread idea! It is always interesting to see different backgrounds and life journeys.
Started my apprenticeship as a Tool & Die Maker right out of high school at a small shop with me being the 15th employee. Back then we strictly did replacement tooling which required a lot of high precision fitting/hand work. Did a lot of work for places like Timken and 3M which was a great learning curve. Over the years our place grew to 155 employees and we began doing full automation machinery for the automotive fuel and brake companies which ultimately feed Ford/GM/Honda etc. Thru these years I also went back to get my Millwright ticket( completed 1997) and began the Industrial Electrical apprenticeship but never fully finished as things were too busy on the home front(marriage/4 kids). I have seen a lot of changes in the industry thru the years from only one computer in the front office to most machinery being CNC controlled. 34 years go by in a flash.
I have always enjoyed building things and the owners where I work have been great over the years allowing me to come in and use the full shop in the off hours and it is very well equipped. I also have a small heated shop at home with some fabricating equipment and am usually there on weekends. I have no idea when retirement will happen-Having too much fun!!
Growing up my whole famiIy was in home building/construction so there was not a lot of mechanical tools available and less mechanical knowledge. Thru high school I started to buy my own tools and learned a lot of stuff the hard way(library, purchased all types of auto magazines, made a LOT of mistakes) and have tried to pass on this knowledge to my kids and friends. I now feel comfortable enough wrenching that I did my head gaskets on my 6.0 PSD when the time arrived.
Our other big enjoyment is an island cottage which is located in Northern Ontario(Lake Temagami). Great fishing and beautiful clear lake. This was originally built by my Uncle, fell out of the family, my brother bought it and his kids hated it so we purchased it 10 years ago.This is not a go to every weekend cottage due to the distance but we do manage to get there around 8 times a year and are right now waiting for the ice to freeze up enough to cross with the snowmobiles. Our kids enjoy it as well and they are now going up on their own with their friends.
Cool. I worked with Eaton Hydraulics for a number of years. It is how I ended up living in Minnesota. I still live in the city the HQ is in. The driveline products were part of the Truck (I think) division. That corporation got reorganized so many times it made my head spin. Sauer Danfoss bought Eaton Hydraulics only a few months ago. It is weird to see everything repainted from Eaton blue to Danfoss orange.
Nice! Was that a gear, vane, gerotor or piston pump?
I have seen and owned black belted galloways, but not red. Pretty cool!!!
There is a guy not too far from here who has a small herd of the galloways. I think they're cool. I did little searching on them a few years ago and it seems that they were first brought into the country by a guy in this area. Their claim to fame is that they can make beef out of almost nothing at all.
Equipment technician for the semiconductor (microchip) industry for 23 years. Basically I work on some of the multi-million dollar machines that make the microchips that go into your phone, computer, cars, etc. Used to like my job, but not so much anymore. Tired of the corporate BS that has changed the role into something else.
My uncle was a DIY guy like the people on this forum. My father not so much. So my father would take his trucks over to my uncles and work on it with him while I watched, handed wrenches, or sometimes help stabilize a transmission as we were lowering it or raising it into position. So I started to gain my DIY interest when I was young. Later on I was in a time crunch to get brakes done on a truck I had at the time. Took it to a shop due to my lack of experience and time crunch I was under. Got taken to the cleaners on that brake job. From that point on, I pretty much vowed to do all of my own work as much as I can.
Equipment technician for the semiconductor (microchip) industry for 23 years. Basically I work on some of the multi-million dollar machines that make the microchips that go into your phone, computer, cars, etc. Used to like my job, but not so much anymore. Tired of the corporate BS that has changed the role into something else.
It is a shame how they seem to find a way to ruin everything that's good.
It is a shame how they seem to find a way to ruin everything that's good.
That it is. I remember when I first started in this field when it was a "job". It was actually enjoyable back then. But then it turned out to be a career and Corporate America turns you into a number rather than a person.
Well I finally have time to share my journey. "Boring" normal life growing up in the country in Oklahoma. Been called a "jack of all trades" by many. My wife adds on to it saying "master of none"....
Science, history and math were always my favorite subjects. Graduated as valedictorian. For my 21st birthday I bought myself my first splurge item in my entire life, a used Corvette, which I still have today. That sucker put some milage on the highways later visiting family 750 miles away. It also got 32mpg with that V8. After college I went into the unrelated religious field as a missionary. I built houses for homeless families in Mexico for 4 years doing that. On the weekends I was back state side in El Paso.
Somehow I managed to convince my friend from back in college to date during that time. Eventually I suckered won her over and we got married. Me a simple Okie, with a hot blonde from Orange County California. 4 months later I finally found our 7.3 after I'd been searching for the options it had for a year.
The organization I was with underwent a split and we had 80% turn over in staffing almost overnight. I was putting in 120 hours a week for 9 months straight starting the month after getting married. The "leadership" called me and my wife into a closed office one Friday and handed me "my" letter of resignation and we were threatened into signing it. Found out later 3 people were hired to do the work I was doing.
Since we had made close contacts all over the US during those years we had many people offering us jobs in many states. Eventually after a month long road trip checking some out and weighing our options we decided to come back to my hometown. Yay to returning to my old fast food job from high school and college, plus a second job driving a forklift.
Nine months later and we had a house, great full time "career" jobs, and our first kid on the way. Eventually had 3 girls and lastly a boy. We took long trips to visit her family in CA every 5 or 6 months.
I worked at a paper mill these past 16 years. We specialize in recycled fiber, we mostly make tissue, napkin, and towel. So, i operate a 200 million dollar piece of equipment known as a paper machine. The sheer size of it usually stuns most people the first time they see it in person. A you tube video, while informative, can't convey the enormous size of something that spits out 300 tons of paper every 24 hours. It's building is 100foot wide, 120foot tall, and 700feet long. Most of the inner workings are actually downstairs in the first floor "basement" which is 30foot tall. The machine is actually on the 2nd floor, so I get to go up 3 stories of stairs every day just to clock in. And then run downstairs and back up countless times a shift depending on how things run that day/night. I operate the machine, turning the pulp stock into the paper sheet. I deal a lot with hot rotating machinery, also with the ins and outs of not just how it works and how to run it, but how to troubleshoot it. So I have a fair bit of useless knowledge on steam systems, pressure vessels, hydraulics, pneumatics, lube systems, cranes, stock prep, computers, and logistics. Then there's the fun hands on stuff that requires wrenches for 2-6" diameter nuts and bolts
We missed the missionary calling, and happily stumbled into hosting foreign exchange students one fall. We house students for the whole high school year, mostly from China, Spain, Norway, and Germany. Some students have visited us again for a few weeks. One has come back 6 times for a few months. We may have to "adopt" her.
The trusty old 7.3 was hauling a small 5th wheel over the Rockies and around the local state parks and whatnot. Got on here to look into making it tow easier and been stuck on y'all ever since. Upgraded from that small 5th wheel to something much bigger and more capable for a family of 6 on cross country trips vs the small one was barely adequate for just overnights at local parks while we are out hiking.
Been thru a lot of ups and downs with y'all. Looking forward to some more good memories
