September 16, 2020

When driving around our service territory, you may see a FirstEnergy vehicle parked at a job site, near a substation or a company facility. One place you will rarely see our vehicles is at a service station. That’s because FirstEnergy has a team of dedicated mechanics who maintain all company vehicles – and their related equipment – almost exclusively in-house at utility company service centers.

Our fleet mechanics care for more than 9,000 pieces of equipment companywide, including: tractor trailers, bucket trucks, digger derricks, pickups, vans, bulldozers, all-terrain vehicles (ATVs), lawn mowers and snowblowers. And when you consider that the average bucket truck covers up to 10,000 miles per year – and the average supervisor’s pickup travels about 20,000 miles annually – there is plenty of work to keep these employees busy.

Company mechanics perform approximately 15,000 oil changes per year. Additional maintenance activities include brake jobs, engine overhauls and making repairs to hydraulic components. Other than factory recalls, transmission rebuilds and mounting large truck tires, there are very few jobs our mechanics can’t do.

Alan Kirkpatrick, mechanic A, uses a heavy-duty torque wrench to make sure the lug nuts are tightened properly on a bucket truck.

FirstEnergy mechanics take pride in being able to maintain a variety of vehicles, according to Dave Sestak, supervisor, Regional Operations West, CEI. “You name it, we work on it,” he said.

Dave supervises fleet mechanics at the Concord (Ohio) Operations Center, where more than 150 pieces of equipment reside. “We have a special group of mechanics at our facility,” continued Dave. “They can go from working on a bucket truck one day to a bulldozer the next. It takes a unique person with an extensive knowledge base to excel at this type of work.”

Employees who rely on company vehicles to perform their jobs know how important it is for mechanical, hydraulic and electrical components to operate properly and safely. They also know that if a piece of equipment fails in the field, one of our dedicated mechanics will travel to their location to make repairs.

“Our fleet mechanics work in all weather conditions, and this is especially important during outage restoration events,” added Dave. “When it comes to mechanics, you won’t find any better employees or harder workers. They can tackle a wide array of maintenance and repair tasks on many different pieces of equipment, and they do their jobs right the first time.”