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On The Road
Construction gangs in the Network Operations Group go anywhere, anytime. They climb towers and splice cable. They're on the road 365 days a year.
The tower soars 300 feet above a Missouri beanfield — a spider web of steel that warns off planes with flashing red lights.
It's late July, an hour before noon. The Midwest heat eases past 96 degrees. And climbs.
"Hey, get out of here. Go on, get," barks AT&T construction foreman Ron Sheehy at a small brown dog snooping around the base of the radio tower.
The dog is Herbie Hardhead. "That's what we call him," says Ron. "He belongs to the farmer over there and he'll drag off anything he can get hold of, too."
Herbie runs off.
A few feet away, Tim Souder and John Wilson each strap on nearly 30 pounds of wrenches, pliers and assorted tools. It will take the construction technicians 10 minutes to scale the 300-foot tower. Once on top, they'll dangle over the side on safety belts, adjust one of the antennas and lock in the best transmission signal to the next tower.
At AT&T's Prairie Home, Missouri, microwave tower, the men sweat. Relief from the heat is a battered water jug that they haul in themselves. Sometimes they find a sliver of shade when the alignment of the sun, the building and their work load is just right. When night falls, the men will find beds in places like the El Donna and Lazy K motels, where rates dip under $20 a night. They'll drink beer and eat hot dogs.
These are "non located employees" — a mobile work force in the Network Operations Group (NOG) that the corporation can ring up anytime and send anywhere, day or night. They're experts at splicing cable and working towers. Their job can take them to Waco, Texas, or Dodge City, Kansas, or Atlanta — wherever there's work. AT&T doesn't pay them to go home, if they have one. Most are single, some travel with trailers and their wives. Some put their kids through school on the road. Others "park" their families.
It's a different way of life. "We don't belong to any local bowling teams," jokes one technician.
They get $256 "cash money" a week for expenses, and 22-cents a mile when they move from job to job.
"It's hard work, it's good work," says Ron, who has worked the construction gangs for 22 years. He has logged more than two decades on the road, hundreds of thousands of miles on company odometers, including those on his six-man company truck that was stolen in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and later found stripped in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
But Ron and the others see more than dusty roads to towers and cable route rights of way. They hear more than the clanging of tools in flatbed trucks.
And they worry about their jobs. They're hungry for news. Yet, for every doubt, they dredge up a shard of hope, a way to turn the tables — a way to protect their jobs. There's quality; They take tremendous pride in their work. And they never doubt for a moment that their sweat in summer and numbed fingers in winter are their contribution to the company's future and the survival of the gangs. They're a team.
"We understand service," says Ron, who doesn't doubt that service is like the Constitution and the Bible rolled into one.
My men know that if they don't do a good job, they won't have a job. Be a part or depart, that's the name of the game out here," he says.
No Quiche Here
Lunchtime. The trucks churn the dirt road into Prairie Home, population 279, about a mile away. It's a one-cafe town built around a baseball field. The men eye the menu across tables covered with plastic tablecloths. No quiche. No chicken tarragon on a croissant here. "Give me the pork chop platter," Ron says politely. Mashed potatoes, green beans with bacon, a salad and a 1-inch slice of "Texas toast" follow, all for a few bucks.
It's a hearty spread.
Ron and Darrell Dorsey, a NOG transmission systems supervisor helping to orient the antenna at Prairie Home, share news on the NOG grapevine — and review the work ahead at the tower. Ron passes along assignments to the other tables. Although not part of the gang, Darrell's specialty — precision tuning — often puts him at a tower with the gang.
Unknown to any at the cafe, Friday, Oct. 14 will be Darrell's last day with the company. Just weeks after the July lunch with the gang, he'll accept an offer to retire after 33 years of service — 22 of them on the road, at an average of 33,000 miles per year.
But for Ron, Darrell and the gang, it's still July. October is months away. Today they're sharing one more crossing. The food is good. And outside, the sky is clear over the Missouri farmland. They have a job to do.
But 120 miles west, downsizing clouds loom on the 32nd floor of a Kansas City office building. "It's a nasty business," says Construction Manager Spike Pinney, who oversees five full-time gangs in the field, including Ron's at Prairie Home.
Spike tries to balance thoughts of tower work and cable splicing with the task spread out over his desk. He's grouping his foremen, all supervisors, into performance bands — a roster of who goes first if business needs trim his force.
"We've been told there's more cuts coming and to be ready," says Spike quietly. Last year he lost seven people. Today, he has two jobs on hold — part of the company-wide freeze on hiring.
"Some of my people are scared to death. And my reputation as an axman when it comes to waste doesn't help," says Spike, who logged 20 years on the road with the gangs before trading his truck cab-office for a perch in a downtown skyscraper.
But he remembers.
"In 1973, I took a seven-man crew into North Dakota for tower work. The conditions were horrible. We had that old wind coming down on us at 20- to 30-degrees below zero. When I left, I had two left on the crew. The other five quit. It was too cold. But the company sent us up there to do a job and we did it."
A year later, in January 1974, he left Kansas City for upper Michigan with a 12-man crew to build temporary towers to test transmission paths.
"I told the gang before we left that I didn't design this project up there for January but that we were going to go up there and build. We put those towers up and tore the last one down at 44 degrees below zero. Not a soul quit.
"It's hard work. I loved it."
When Spike was offered the second-level job five years ago in Kansas City, "Hell, I didn't want it. My wife and I batted it around for six weeks before I decided it was right. There was a lot of change going on and I didn't think it was being handled right. I decided to control my own future," says Spike, who now owns his first home.
When Spike arrived in Kansas City, the district headquarter's group was well-stocked. There were three second levels, a half-dozen first-level supervisors and lots of clerks. After several reorganizations and downsizings, "it's just me and a clerk in charge of the crew," says Spike. The district's administrative budget has shrunk from millions into the thousands.
"We've had to change. The gangs, too. Just pick up the 'Wall Street Journal' and see what happens. Companies don't change. And they're gone."
"I want my gangs to survive. I want them to be here when I'm gone. I don't want to be the one to put a 100-year-old business out of business," says Spike, resisting an urge to pound on his desk top. "I didn't come here for that. My gangs are competing and that's the beauty of it all.
"Maybe I run scared at times. But I'm not going to chance it. I'm going to find work for my crews and ways to help this company be profitable or we aren't going to survive. This is a new company," says Spike, who doesn't take lightly the fact that he's an AT&T shareholder.
Today, July 26, Spike has a gang splicing cable in Saint Joseph, Missouri, another removing old cable from conduit in Bryan, Texas. A third crew is traveling to Sanford, North Carolina, to realign an antenna, and after a few days it will turn south to Florida for more work. Another gang is working on a radio route in Olive Branch, Mississippi. Other technicians and supervisors, alone or in pairs, are on special assignments splicing cable or installing regeneration stations that boost signals on the company's lightguide (fiber optics) routes.
Covers 14 States
Altogether, Spike manages about 56 people, including the district's administrative support group. His duties include maintaining over 1,100 towers in 14 states — more than a quarter of the tower in AT&T's nationwide network. His crews install new cable in five midwestern states. They reclaim copper. They restore service to towers downed by tornadoes. "They've pumped sewage and roofed buildings," adds Spike. "They've cleared brush, painted doors and replaced tower lights shot out by hunters — all at a labor rate competitive with outside contractors.
"I work them, and work them some more," adds Spike. "They know there's a fire-breathing dragon hanging over the swords. And it's not just me. They know we have to keep costs down to compete with contractors.
"When you get right down to the nitty-gritty, my construction force is managed cost-effectively, with one of the lowest labor rates in AT&T, even though we pay big dollars and pay expenses. We compete with contractors. And we have a completely trained labor force that can work faster with higher quality."
Hard Feelings Surface
When Spike took charge of the gangs five years ago, there were hard feelings. "Some people transferred. Others wanted out," says Spike. "My district manager came to me and said, 'The whole damn outfit is scared of you.'"
Spike called a meeting, and called in a facilitator. "We laid the problems out, did some apologizing, too. The meeting modified my thinking, I was on a learning curve, too. I know I'm tough, but I haven't shot any of them, either. I run a tight ship. We have problems, but we're getting them worked out."
For Spike, a red Christmas stocking hanging on his office wall serves as a reminder, perhaps an incentive. It's full of coal — a gift of friendly teasing than of meanness.
"Ron is a good friend," says Spike. "I lean on him pretty hard sometimes. But he's a good, fast thinker. He's made some damn good employees. When you've got five or six men on a tower all doing different functions, they depend on each other for their safety, and the person running the operation has to know what he's doing. You can injure a person real quick on a tower if you don't. I trust them every way there is to trust them and they get the job done."
Overall, Spike believes morale on the crews is pretty high. "But morale is like trying to hold Jell-O in your hands without the bowl," adds Spike. "It depends on what took place that day."
Spike has his days, too. He keeps in close touch with his crews almost daily by telephone. "Sometimes I think he blows his frustration into the phone," says Ron. "I think he does that because he wants to be out here."
Maybe so. But most of the people on the crews also know that Spike is in the office fighting for them, fighting to keep them in business.
Knowing How to Win
Spike, whose dad was a master sergeant in the Air Force, likes to win. "When I go to war, I want to win. I don't want to sit down and have all these meetings to figure out how it's going to get done.
"People in the other offices sometimes accuse me of jumping in their bucket, telling them how to do their job. But when a route's in trouble, that's my customer out there and I can't let him or her go to hell. If someone wants to jump in my boat, that's fine, but they better bring a big oar."
These aren't idle ramblings, either. Spike follows a strategy. He believes he can lead, and win, with unit costs. "It's a new way of looking at the work we do. And it has been very hard to instill throughout the organization, to look at everything we do, every widget of work we produce, every splice we make or mile of fiber we install, and know what it costs. And then ask, 'Should we be doing this?'
"Our corporation directed us to do this years ago. My boss drives us to do it. It costs us about $700 to $1,000 to splice a cable, about $40,000 to $50,000 to lay a mile of cable," says Spike, as he points to a row of black binders on a shelf. "It's all here. My overhead to the gangs, just me sitting in this office, is $2.38 per hour.
Spike's unit costs for construction are perhaps some of the best in the company, but he doesn't know for sure because the other figures aren't available to compare.
Five years ago, when Spike took his new job, work was leaving the group because its costs were high. The group's labor rate was hovering near $60 per hour. The engineers who design these jobs and compile the estimates are driven to do their job cost-efficiently and they were going outside because they could get a lower rate.
Today, the group's labor rate is about $37 per hour — and includes increased wages and increased expenses. The work has returned. And using unit-cost calculations, Spike hunts for more work.
Trouble in Texas
The phone rings. It's 2:33 in the afternoon.
"Spike here." It's an operations technician reporting zero air pressure on an antenna in Joshua, Texas.
The antennas on radio towers are pressurized to keep dry air in the waveguide used to transmit the signal. Without pressure, the waveguide can fill up with water in about 20 minutes during a rainstorm and AT&T loses the route. The Joshua antenna is in trouble.
"O.K. I'll get back to you," Spike tells the technician. He pulls out his schedule sheet for the gangs. Spike has people in San Antonio and a crew pulling cable in Bryan, Texas. He makes a half-dozen calls trying to contact his foreman in San Antonio and Bryan. He leaves word with other network operations managers to track them down.
Minutes later, Spike's phone rings again. It's Ronnie Ijams, the foreman in Bryan.
"Hey Ronnie, I got zero air at Joshua, Texas. I don't know where you sit but you need to get a couple men rolling. The craft there thinks he sees a bullet hole in the corner of the antenna. If you get there after dark, hit the tower the first thing in the morning. Yea, 6 a.m."
Problem solved. The clock reads 2:45 p.m. Twelve minutes have elapsed.
"I control everything from here," says Spike. "I control the paper. I know where my gangs are and what they are doing. And we can respond. That's something a contractor can't do.
"We used to be loose about our hours and work. Now we have weekly progress reports. I look at the vouchers, the time reporting, the scheduled work. Each day, the foremen explain what they did and our productivity has sky-rocketed," a development Spike attributes to driving more accountability and responsibility to his supervisors.
Quality Works
They even use portable communications units to access electronic mail to talk with one another and with the "home" office.
"But the real key," says Spike, "is something that's in their job description: a requirement that everyone from supervisor to technician keep pace with his peers. This way, peers set the standards and those standards are going to constantly change as new force comes on and finds new ways to get our product out the door quicker and better. Peers won't stand for dead weight. My job is to steer that change in a positive direction.
" That's what this quality process is all about, putting the processes in place so people can do the work. We've been doing that for years.
"We squeeze and squeeze and squeeze," adds Spike. "So far, we haven't let anything fall down."
Since July, since Prairie Home, Ron's crew has been on the road: Syracuse, Kansas, then down to Plainview on the Texas panhandle. They've been to Norman, Oklahoma, and Adams, Texas, and back to Kansas to install strobes on towers.
Ron also has learned that the jobs on the gang are going to be "protected" from downsizing because of the workload.
"This is what I do," says Ron. "If we tell people AT&T is the best, we've got to show them. We're specialists. We understand service."•jmb
Network Operations Group Construction Technician Tim Souder seen at the Prairie Home, Missouri, site.
Prairie Home, Missouri — a one-cafe town with a ball field. The food is good.
The Prairie home tower stands a mile outside town on Highway J. (Webmaster note: The Prairie Home site is actually located right at three miles west-southwest of town on Route J.)
Construction Technician John Wilson can scale the 300-foot Prairie Home tower in 10 minutes.
Gang Foreman Ron Sheehy, who has been bitten by a dog and a snake in the same day, coordinates the work.
Spike Pinney traded the open road for an office perch in a skyscraper. Today he manages 56 people over 14 states, including five construction crews. Although there are no women on the crews right now, they've played a part in the past — sometimes with as many as three on a crew of six. (Webmaster note: The "skyscraper" in the background is the Kansas City AT&T District Office at 1425 Oak St.)
John Wilson climbs down from the 300-foot Prairie Home tower following a steaming July afternoon. He carries about 30 pounds of tools, seen below. On a hot day, he can climb his way into a cool breeze. In subzero weather, he threads bolts by hand — no gloves.
Tim Souder climbs the 300-foot Prairie Home tower.
Special thanks to Tim Souder for sharing photos of the story from the Oct. 25, 1988 issue of AT&T's internal magazine, "Focus" on the AT&T Long Lines Facebook group.
Last updated: Nov. 1, 2024.
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