What is a lineman's life really like during a storm? While the 7,200 volts are dangerous, the greatest threat is far more surprising. 21-year veteran powerline technician Aaron LeBlanc (from the YouTube channel Bobsdecline) pulls back the curtain on this high-stakes trade, revealing why public perception of storm recovery is often wrong.
Ever wonder if the most lethal danger isn't the electricity, but something far more common? Aaron shares the chilling truth about the #1 threat linemen face - a hazard that has tragically caused fatalities. This episode is a crucial look into the unseen challenges, intense brotherhood, and life-saving knowledge of one of the world's most demanding professions.
Topics:
- Becoming a powerline technician
- The unseen reality of storm work
- How to get into the lineman trade
- The Utility Expo
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Episode transcript:
Taylor White: All right, ladies and gentlemen, the wait is finally over. Registration for CONEXPO-CON/AGG 2026 is over. With 2,000 exhibitors, 2.9 million square feet packed with cutting edge equipment, technology, and the best minds in construction. You won't want to miss it. The best part, you can save 40% on show admission right now by using code PODCAST40. This offer is good through Friday, September 12, so you better buy those tickets soon and join us in Las Vegas next March.
Welcome back, everybody, to the CONEXPO-CON/AGG podcast. I am your host, as always, Taylor White. With me here today, I have somebody who, I'm not gonna lie, if you're not watching this on camera right now, and I just saw him, kind of looks like Travis Pastrana. And I'm sure maybe you got that before, but you guys look very similar. I have with me Mr. Bobsdecline, Aaron LeBlanc. Aaron, thanks for being here today.
Aaron LeBlanc: Thanks for having me, Taylor.
Taylor White: Dude, has anybody ever said you look like Travis Pastrana before?
Aaron LeBlanc: I've gotten it a dozen times or so on the YouTube comments.
Taylor White: Yeah, you, dude, you look like, you look like him so much. But you're not. You are Aaron, and you have 146,000 subscribers and over 28 million views on YouTube. And for the past hour, I have just been watching your videos, so cool.
Aaron LeBlanc: Awesome.
Taylor White: Congrats, man. That is awesome. What made you kind of want to start doing this and maybe give the viewers a little bit about, well, start with, you know, what you do. You're a lineman in the trades by day.
Aaron LeBlanc: Yeah, so I've been a power line technician for a little over 21 years now. Started in 2003, and initially I started off, I went through the college training program. So it's not just a climbing school. It actually gets all your certifications, just your basic stuff like your first aid and pole top rescue and stuff. And then we actually go with the company I'm currently working for now on the road for nine months and go out doing construction jobs, kind of getting in your entire first block. At the end of that first block, the company decides on whether they want to hire you or not. There were just a couple of us that were hired that year, so that would have been in 2004 that I was actually hired.
I finished out my apprenticeship with the company and I worked as a first-class lineman for the first, probably, 10 years of my trade. There wasn't a whole lot of openings at first, but during that 10 years, I took every opportunity I could to just further my education within the trades, took courses on confined space work and rescue, working underground work, substation. I took on some courses for supervisory roles, three-phase metering, equipment, transmission, basically anything and everything that had to do with our trade. I wanted to make sure I had some knowledge and experience in that until eventually the opportunity came up to run a trouble truck, working exclusively for the area that I live in for my town.
I work away from the office. I keep the truck at home and I've been doing that for about 10 years now. It was kind of my direction at first to go into some training, work in the training school a little bit. Once I landed this gig here, I just absolutely loved it. The doing trouble every day is pretty exciting, pretty interesting, and you really get to help out your community and stuff. So while I kind of took on that path within my career, I still enjoyed teaching not only our trade but members of the public and stuff about our trade. So that's when I kind of started off with the YouTube channel. I can get into some more specifics of how things got rolling later if you want. Definitely got a few stories on how we get into things there.
Taylor White: Yeah, how you've gotten to where you are with YouTube is crazy. But, you know, I think it's interesting you mentioned, you know, you work with the municipality out and you're a fellow Canadian as well, too, right? Out in BC?
Aaron LeBlanc: I'm over in New Brunswick. Complete, complete opposite side.
Taylor White: It's Moncton. Give me some, give me some grace. Yeah, I was gonna say you kind of have an accent on you so I could tell. I'm like, this is, this is good. Good to get other Canadians on here as well, too. So, New Brunswick. So you deal with a lot of crazy, insane weather. And I think that's where some of your videos were I was watching just now. What I'm kind of interested in as well, too, is just like the life of a lineman, or trouble, like doing in the trouble truck, like what you're doing now. Like what's that average day kind of look like for you?
Aaron LeBlanc: Average day? Usually, there's at least a dozen, sometimes this time of year it could get like 50 work orders sitting on my truck. Most mornings, the first thing I do is there's an appointment with an electrician somewhere within the community. A lot of upgrade work with electricians involves the power company, so it's usually as simple as just going and shutting off the power for the day. A lot of older homes are built off of 60 or 100-amp entrances, so if they get a brand new heat pump or something, I show up in the morning, disconnect the lines in the house, electrician upgrades the system, do a 200-amp upgrade, I come back at the end of the day to hook that back up. So that's pretty standard in most of my days, is to start off my day meeting an electrician.
While that happens in the background, there are constant trouble calls coming in. It's 24/7. So if there's a trouble call that's an emergency, a fire, a large outage, that takes precedence over any appointments with electricians, of course. Some of the more minor stuff, partial power calls, blinking lights, I'll still meet up with my electrician and head to that afterwards. If it happens to be a quiet day where there's not a whole lot going on, that's when I tap into those two dozen, could be 50 work orders. They're typically maintenance work orders, inspection work orders on our equipment, substations, oil reclosures, voltage regulators, customer concerns that aren't typically a priority. Maybe they just hear a buzzing sound off in the distance or something, just some small investigation stuff. So when it's a quiet day, there's a whole list of things to do sitting on my computer screen.
Taylor White: That's wild. It's like everything that you listed is everything that you like is entailed in your job, but I think what actually is probably the most crazy and the thing that interests me the most is you're doing all that but through freezing cold, extreme heat, and storms, which is probably the most insane part. So, like, touch a little bit on that because you work everything. I mean, I know your weather out there as well, too. You could be minus 40 or plus 40, and you could be in the middle of an ice storm, sleet, rain, wind, snow, or all of the above all at the same time. So what's it like dealing with that part of your job?
Aaron LeBlanc: It's funny you mention that because the joke around here is you could literally be out sun tanning one day and have a snowstorm the next. I was right down to a t-shirt doing a construction job in February years and years and years ago. And there was snow on the ground, but it hit 20 degrees Celsius in February. So the weather is definitely pretty extreme. Something interesting that most people wouldn't think about the weather is with our snowstorms. A lot of people say, "You know, I feel bad you guys working out in that snowstorm and the hard, the harsh winds and the sleet and the hail and the rain, whatever's going on in the freezing cold." But it's actually quite the opposite oftentimes.
So if there's a real bad snowstorm, say we got three, four, even six feet of snow and it's real cold, the equipment's all froze up. Your grounds, you take your grounds out, and they're frozen into coils basically. But generally from the public's view looking in, because of those conditions, it's almost like you're, it's expected for things to take a little longer. So if it takes a few extra hours to change a pole because of the weather conditions, people don't generally get overly cranky about that. Mind you, when it's 40 degrees, sweltering heat, beautiful day, everyone's out on the beach, you're doing the same job, it's kind of like, "What's taking so long?" But it's harder to work sometimes in the 40-degree heat than minus 25 degrees Celsius because you can always dress up in the cold. We've got really excellent gear to keep, I mean, we've got full FR balaclavas now and FR goggles and we can really bundle up to fight against that cold. But in the heat, you can only strip down so much, and our trade requires long-sleeve FR. So sometimes the heat's more of a challenge than the cold weather.
Taylor White: Yeah. What's like, do you remember like, the wildest weather that you've ever been out in?
Aaron LeBlanc: The wildest weather? I can certainly tell many, many stories. I was working on a tower one day on a marsh. It was probably about a 140-foot tower. We had to replace some steel beams on it. It was 1 or 2 degrees. It was above zero. It was actually perfect weather for working in, especially climbing steel, because you could work hard and not work up a sweat. It was probably about an eight-hour job at the top of the structure. About halfway through, we ended up getting a bit of an ice storm, which as far as comfort while working up there, that's fine, except the whole 140 feet of the tower got coated in ice, which we had to climb down. And towards the end, and even maneuvering up there, it got extremely challenging. So that was one of the most memorable as far as while you're up there working, you're like, "Oh my God, like, I just can't wait to get home. This is no fun."
Taylor White: What was your winter like this year? Was it pretty bad?
Aaron LeBlanc: No, our last, our last few winters have been really quiet, actually.
Taylor White: Really?
Aaron LeBlanc: Yeah. Some of the quietest we ever had, especially for emergency calls. A lot of our emergency calls in the winter come from heavy equipment, like snow clearing incidents, for example. Once you get so much snow on the ground, it almost makes a barrier between the road and the poles. So when there's a lot of vehicle accidents in the winter, once there's five or six feet of snow on the ground, that acts as a barrier, so when the cars get around on the road, they hit snow banks instead of our poles. The busiest time is late fall and early spring, where that's when the snow is wet and heavy, when it's close to 0 degrees, and it doesn't take much. You can get maybe 5, 10 centimeters of heavy wet snow, and because of the temperatures, there's so much moisture in that snow, it'll fold the tree branches over pretty quick, knocking power out. But this year, it was probably the mildest I'd ever seen, or the slowest, I should say, for emergency calls.
Taylor White: What do most people not know about storm work, or what do people, most people not see about the storm work that it's like? Because I'm not in that industry, too, right? And I know like there's always, you know, when you're in the industry, you know these certain things. It's like, "Well, that's not getting fixed right now because we're actually got to go and do this." What do people not see or know about your work?
Aaron LeBlanc: The biggest thing I would say revolves around procedure a lot of times. So the initial, when a storm rolls in, most of our crews are tied up making scenes safe. So I might get a call from 911. There could be a large tree, take out a three-phase line. The public sees us roll in, sometimes even two or three trucks. They're like, "Oh good, the power company's here. We're going to get our power back soon." But we could have hundreds of similar calls where this road's blocked, there's equipment arcing, there's emergency services, police, fire department standing by. We're just there to make sure everybody's safe. So we might jump out of the truck, cut some lines down, throw some grounds on, cut the tree, drag it off the road, then we're gone. And it's not because the guys don't want to work and get the power back on. In the public's eyes, sometimes it can seem inefficient. Like, "You're here, why not fix it?" But it doesn't have anything to do with inefficiencies. It has to do strictly with safety at that point.
When lines hit the ground, they don't always trip open. Sometimes they stay on the ground energized, so it's extremely, extremely important that we show up to all these scenes. Once that's done, we come up with a plan of attack, and that involves getting our hospitals on, for example. Hospitals are very, very high-priority special care homes. And it even goes down as far as gas stations. When there's a week or two-long, two-week-long outages, we want to get our gas stations back on so people can get fuel, fuel their generators, grocery stores, then we move into the residential areas. So oftentimes we're passing through residential areas. It could be a parade of 10 or 12 trucks going to get a feeder on, get an area downtown back on. It's tough sometimes because the people see us rolling down the street and they get all excited, and then we just keep right on rolling by and we don't come back.
So it's hard to explain because people only see what they see. And then once we do show up again, as I mentioned, procedurally, there's a ton of procedure, which I show on my YouTube channel, with working on high-voltage lines where we can't just show up and start going to work. We have to drive sometimes for miles to check switches open. We have to make sure that there's no way the line can be backfed. Sometimes there's a way we can do temporary work, get the majority of customers back on and just section off maybe a small subdivision to get an entire feeder back on, and then we slowly work our way down once all the priority customers are on to numbers. At that point, if I can spend two hours to get a thousand people back on, I'm not going to spend eight hours to get that one camp back on that's up in the mountain kind of thing. So at that point, it's pretty common sense as far as the priority goes.
Taylor White: You mentioned when a line falls and it stays energized, like how often does that happen? Because again, I don't know much about your world. So if a line that's energized falls on the ground, like, does that charge? Can it dissipate through the ground, or, like, no?
Aaron LeBlanc: Absolutely. And ground condition plays a big factor.
Taylor White: Water?
Aaron LeBlanc: Exactly, water, rain, even if it's grass versus pavement versus concrete.
Taylor White: So I can get shocked.
Aaron LeBlanc: 100%. 100%. So you'll hear the term "potential," more specifically, "step potential." And I'm sure you've heard if there's ever a vehicle accident, there are lines in the vehicle to hop from the vehicle and to hop away. The reason is for exactly what you're talking about. So if you were to imagine a bullseye and at the center of that bullseye is the line voltage, so our lines are 7,200 volts. The lines are draped over a car, and let's say it's sitting on your car, it's not touching the ground. So your car is that bullseye, it's 7,200 volts. The ground where it's isolated from the tires would be at 0 volts. If you step out of the vehicle, there's a potential difference of 7,200 volts between your two legs, the one that's in the car and the one that's on the ground.
So you get rid of that car, and let's just say the line is laying on the ground itself. The ground's not overly conductive, it's not drawing a whole lot of fault current, so it doesn't trip the line out. The line is still energized. If you happen to be standing there, you're just taking a walk down the sidewalk, you're standing still, a line comes down, lands right beside you, your feet are close together. So from the bullseye, let's say 7,200 volts, you move away five feet from that cable. At your feet, there could still be 6,000 volts as it's dissipating away from that line. There could still be 6,000 volts at your feet, but you don't feel it because there's no difference in voltage between your two legs. So if you take a big step, you stick your right foot out a meter away, it lands further away in that bullseye, there could only be 4,000 volts. Well, now your left leg's at 6, your right leg's at 4, there's a 2,000-volt difference between your two legs. That voltage can travel up your leg and down the other easier than it can through that ground. So that's why they kind of tell you to hop or shuffle your feet away, because when you mentioned the voltage dissipating, that's exactly what's happening, the voltage is dissipating through the ground. And an electrocution occurs when there's a difference in voltage, if that makes sense.
Taylor White: Yeah, it does, a hundred percent. I mean, it's scary, which is like, what scares a lineman, or like, you know, a power line technician? What scares you guys the most, or you personally?
Aaron LeBlanc: Oh, nothing. Just joking. Our procedures in the area I work in are incredible. Our company really, really focuses on safety. So you will hear in some areas linemen talk about backfeed. It can be a very scary thing. If a generator is improperly hooked up, that can go reverse through a transformer and actually step the voltage up from 120 to full-line voltage, and it can be lethal to a lineman that's working up on the lines. A very scary situation. Me, personally, I wouldn't say I'm scared of that because our procedures protect us from that. So anytime I'm working on the lines, always, regardless of how simple the job is, we follow our procedures for grounding and bonding. If we're working right on the high side bushing of a transformer, we'll actually disconnect the secondary leads or short them out, plus we have our rubber gloves that are insulated for 20,000 volts. So it's a situation that with procedures can be very well controlled.
One of the things that scares me the most is actually traffic. And there have been some very, very serious incidents. There have been a few losses of life within the last few years related to traffic, where traffic was controlled. There was flag personnel, signage, and somebody going down the road blows through a stop sign because they were texting, or even if it's a medical emergency, somebody could have a heart attack while driving and come right through your work site. That's a hazard that's very difficult to control. I get nervous when I'm working on a four-lane street. We have a flag personnel on site. Sometimes the public can get pretty cranky and start rushing around. We have people intentionally, even, I don't know if I want to use the word "assault" the traffic personnel, but they'll go through the signs. I was at a job just yesterday and I was previewing the job site with our Department of Transportation. The road was completely shut down. There was a concrete barrier in the middle of the road that said, "Road is shut down." And a member of the public sped through the job site and hit the inspector that works for the Department of Transportation. They had it on video and it just cartwheeled the guy. Yeah, he wasn't seriously injured, but they did have to take him to a hospital in an ambulance, and that happened five minutes after I left the job site. That's the kind of thing that I'm very cautious of.
Another big hazard is the tension. The lines, especially communication lines that you're working around, there could be thousands of pounds of tension. And while you're working away, you do your best to inspect adjacent structures, the structure you're working on, keep yourself out of the line of fire if you're working on the inside of a corner or something, but there can certainly be mechanical failures. Whatever's holding that line might let go at any time just because you're shaking the pole around. That's another big hazard, is the high tension of everything. Interestingly enough, when people ask me this question, I very rarely refer back to electrical stuff. Typically, it's thought that that's the biggest hazard of our job is working with electricity. We have very good controls in place with our procedures to protect us from those hazards. But you do have to respect electricity 100%. You can't get complacent with it.
Taylor White: Well, yeah, you're right. It's everybody else, right? It's like leaving for a storm and like when we go do snow removal, not as sketchy as what you do, trust me, but like driving to a site is always the worst part, right, in a snowstorm, because you can't predict what other people are going to do. Like driving down the road is a really dangerous thing. But when you talk about safety and everything, especially even with your supervisor, it kind of raised a question in my mind, just kind of like about the brotherhood or the culture of what you do in your industry. Like power line technician, the guys that do the trouble work, guys like the lineman, like, what's the culture kind of like within the industry? Is it pretty, is it pretty tight?
Aaron LeBlanc: Once you're on site, it's amazing. I've worked many storms, and the crew, the guys that show up for your crew, line work's almost a universal language which, regardless of where they come from, there are general rules that apply for safety and how electricity works. And because I like to think being a lineman is a fairly specialized trade, so if a guy's got his journeyman ticket, chances are he's seen some stuff. So when these guys show up, the brotherhood's really cool. It could be as simple as, "Oh my God, you're from New York, I'm from Canada." And everyone gets together and you really watch each other's backs, you really make sure everyone's safe. The teamwork to get the job done, it's incredible.
And the reason I opened with saying "in person" is there's a lot of stuff online where you see like bickering on forums and threads and stuff like that. And you might have a gentleman that worked in the '80s saying, "Well, back in my day we didn't use fall arrest and you guys are soft now." And then some other guy trying to call out a communication lineman saying, "You're not a real lineman," and another guy. There's a bit of fighting like that online, but when you get out in the field, it's not like that at all. It's very rare that you have somebody show up on a job site that at the end of the storm, you're not going to say, "You know, like, we're brothers." There are female linemen as well, so brothers and sisters. And I guess that's why they changed the term to "power line technician" that we're supposed to use.
Taylor White: Oh, okay. Yeah, I was wondering why. I wasn't sure if it was two different things that you were saying because I'm not in the industry, so I was like, "Oh, maybe he's not a lineman." So you're a lineman, but they just, it's a more progressive way of saying it.
Aaron LeBlanc: Exactly. And I don't think people don't really get hung up on that too much. Like, if you look at my red seal, it says "power line technician." Most people still refer to it as being a lineman. The word "man" in the word "lineman," it's not used to be gender specific. So if you use either one, I've worked with lots of women as well and they're like, "Yeah, I'm a lineman."
Taylor White: How does a power line technician stay in shape? Like, what are you guys doing? I mean, your job is physical demand. Like, I was just watching a video and you had like this massive pole hung out from the side, and you're holding this thing and you got to like, like your shoulders, your arms. It's a pretty physical, demanding job.
Aaron LeBlanc: Absolutely. The most important thing is stretching for sure. I'm not like an overly jacked guy by any sense, but at the same time, you can put me up against a guy that goes to the gym every day and I can work circles around him because you train your muscles for the specific work that you do and you make sure you do your stretches and you look after yourself. You use the equipment that's provided to you. If you get, start getting a little bit overweight over the years as things slow down, it makes the job harder, for sure. It gets, it starts to get harder to climb. It starts to get harder to manipulate your, that stick you were saying about in the video, that thing can go up to 45 feet long, so that stuff gets pretty tricky. But a lot of guys in the trade, I've worked with many guys that are into their 70s that you would never guess they're in any shape at all. You look at them and say, "Jeez, how's he getting up off the couch?" And then he'll go up a pole and just put a 20-year-old to shame with how he can crawl around that pole. It's just a lot of it's muscle memory. And you don't have to be jacked per se to do this job. You just have to be willing to work hard and try to drink lots of water, eat healthy, and not be too much of a mess in your personal life. But if you keep yourself in shape, it makes a big difference. It does make your day-to-day work a lot easier for sure.
Taylor White: How does somebody get into the trade then on that topic? Like, you know, you're saying you got to work hard and, you know, put the work in, right? But what would be the best path forward for somebody to do that? I know you start a journeyman ticket, right? So you start like an apprentice or something like that, but what would you recommend the best kind of way in?
Aaron LeBlanc: I'm not the best person to answer this question because in my area, we have that college program. In the U.S., there are lineman colleges, and there's climbing schools, there's some union-sponsored programs. A lot of guys just get indentured with a contractor working in, so I'm not too familiar on the best path in those areas. When guys ask me, my advice simply is just don't pass up an opportunity. So if they do apply to a climbing school, some guys will say it's a waste of time. You're learning to climb every day, you're getting experience. I don't think it's a waste of time at all. You're not learning how to be a lineman per se, but you're still practicing something that's very pertinent to the work we do.
If you want to get into the trade, you get accepted into a lineman school and you say, "You know, I don't want to go that route. I want to start with boots on the ground right away with the contractor," but that opportunity hasn't presented itself, don't pass up the school. Start anything that's relevant to the trade. Get started. That being said, if you want to get into school but you've got a contractor that's willing to take you on and start showing you the ropes, don't pass that up. If being a lineman is something you're interested in, approach your union halls, approach the schools, approach contractors, make phone calls, and whichever one of those opportunities presents itself first, take it 100%. As you gain experience, it'll allow you to be a little bit more choosy in your path. If you come back and say, "You know, jeez, I've been climbing poles for two years or I'm indentured as a first-year apprentice," and the more experience you get, the easier it'll be to pick the path that you want within the trade.
In our area, it's similar. You can start with a contractor, and they might just get you to be a groundman. A lot of guys start off with ground work, which you travel around with the crews. You don't touch any lines, you don't climb any poles, you're basically getting the material ready for the day, you're tying stuff onto their hand lines, you're doing a lot of prep work, but even in doing that, you're watching these guys every day and you're picking up little tricks and stuff. And then one day they might approach you and say, "You know, do you want to be indentured? Do you want to be a lineman?" and they'll start teaching you how to climb. You'll slowly work your way up through the ladder. So we do that as well with some of our contractors. As I mentioned, our company is directly related to the school. Part of the reason for that is it gives an opportunity for our company to see what these guys got. So instead of hiring on into a union a guy right off the streets with no experience, maybe he's scared of heights, maybe he can't hack it. It is, it can certainly be a difficult trade. There's a lot to it. So with this program, once you pass it, you have your block one for being a lineman. And our company at that point says, "Well, this guy did this for a year, he got good grades, obviously he can handle it. We'll train him from here," kind of thing.
Taylor White: Yeah, I wouldn't be any good at it because I'm scared of heights, so I definitely wouldn't be able to get up the pole. I find it interesting, you know, especially here as well, too. It's the same, right? There are guys that are power line technicians that work with municipalities or the city, whatever. And then there are also guys that are privatized. Why did you go the municipal route? And what would you tell people to be like, "Okay, either the private sector or the municipal."
Aaron LeBlanc: Generally speaking, municipal is less money. If you go with a contractor, you're going to be chasing a lot of storms, you're going to be working on the road a lot more, so you get better compensated for the inconvenience of being on the road. Working for a municipality, you're still going to be fully involved in storms in your area, of course, but many municipalities do help with neighboring provinces and states during storms. I've been in many different jurisdictions during storms, but ultimately, where I work for a municipality, I'm home every night. So if you're a guy that wants to start a family, or if you're a community guy, or you like consistency within your day, municipality is the way to go. There's no hustle in it. You show up to your job from 8:00 to 4:30. You do your on-calls. There's still all kinds of overtime. Most of the guys at our office never have a paycheck without overtime in some way, shape, or form.
If you're young and you want to work on the road, contracting work, I highly recommend it. You'll learn a lot. You can make a ton of money traveling, especially if you get into working transmission lines out of a chopper, or setting poles in the mountains out west, stuff like that. You can put away some pretty big paychecks. And if you go that route, it's not going to last forever because regardless of your thoughts when you're in your 20s, by the time you're 35, you know, you don't want to be on the road sleeping in hotels every night anymore. So it's a good starting point. You can gain a lot of experience. You have to be careful with the different personalities on the road because if you're with a municipality, they're pretty strict on their training and what the responsibilities are for the guys. Some of these jobs with contractors, you might travel to a location, they designate a foreman for a specific job. It could be a contracted six-month job. You don't know any of the guys on site, you don't know what their capabilities are. So as much as I said there is a brotherhood once you're on the site, there is absolutely, but you still have to figure out what your strengths and weaknesses are for sure.
Taylor White: Yeah, I just, I always want that because I mean, even like with a heavy equipment operator or something, even with us, too, right? Like you can go and work municipalities. Municipalities tend to, they pay really well actually around here, but yeah, it's just more slower-paced, you know, you're guaranteed to be home at this time. And they probably, I think they probably have better benefits, so better, I think, just for like all-around family people. Yeah, I think that's probably the same level where you are.
Aaron LeBlanc: Exactly. And most municipalities are unionized now as well. So like, we were with the IBEW. And not that there are many issues. As I mentioned, our company is very safety-oriented, but if there is an issue that you have, I don't really have any specific examples, I guess, but I don't know, maybe there's a procedural issue and the guys don't feel something is safe and maybe the company doesn't take it seriously. You do have the union that's really, really good at backing you. We don't have that issue at my company. If there's a safety issue, they address it 100%. Some other areas aren't so lucky, but it's nice to have that backing with the union, and that also greatly increases the brotherhood within the trade for sure.
Taylor White: Yeah, exactly. Okay, I have a segment, and it is "Underrated versus Overrated."
Aaron LeBlanc: Okay.
Taylor White: Lineman edition.
Aaron LeBlanc: All right. All right.
Taylor White: Power line technician. Okay, so I have some stuff here, and it ranges all the way from something like tools and gear to safety gear, practices, or work habits, or lifestyle on and off the clock. And basically, I want to know from your point of view, is it underrated or overrated? Okay. All right. So first one, underrated or overrated, fiberglass ladder?
Aaron LeBlanc: Underrated.
Taylor White: Okay. Okay, duct tape in the work truck?
Aaron LeBlanc: Overrated. It has to be electrical tape.
Taylor White: Okay. Headlamps versus work lights?
Aaron LeBlanc: Ooh, that's a tough one. You need both. You definitely gotta have both, but I'm gonna say underrated because you should at least always have the headlamp for sure.
Taylor White: Okay.
Aaron LeBlanc: Voltage detector pens in our trades? Overrated. You gotta get a voltmeter. You gotta get a lead right on there. You don't wanna rely on a proximity detector for low-voltage stuff.
Taylor White: Okay, interesting. Leather gloves under rubber gloves?
Aaron LeBlanc: I would say never. That'd be awful hard to work with leather under a rubber glove.
Taylor White: Okay. Some safety gear stuff. Okay, so full FR kit in the summertime?
Aaron LeBlanc: If you're wearing DragonWear stuff, it's awesome. The full FR stuff, this, it's 30 degrees outside today and I feel like I'm in a t-shirt.
Taylor White: Oh, awesome. Okay, so underrated.
Aaron LeBlanc: Underrated. You have to have the right gear, though. There's some stuff out there that's pretty warm, yeah.
Taylor White: Harness versus body belt?
Aaron LeBlanc: Oh, depends on the task, I guess. You're always wearing one or the other. I don't really know how to answer that one.
Taylor White: What about wearing your hard hat in the truck, aka truck hat?
Aaron LeBlanc: That's overrated.
Taylor White: Okay, let's do a couple more lifestyle on and off the clock stuff. Driving a lifted diesel as your daily?
Aaron LeBlanc: For me, that's overrated.
Taylor White: Packing your lunch versus buying it?
Aaron LeBlanc: Oh, that's underrated.
Taylor White: Drinking energy drinks before a 16-hour shift?
Aaron LeBlanc: Oh, never. Oh, highly overrated. Don't touch those things.
Taylor White: Yeah, I agree. They're nasty. Don't drink them. Bragging rights for storm calls?
Aaron LeBlanc: That's overrated. Gotta be humble.
Taylor White: Okay, those are some questions that are burning in my mind. I'm like, "We gotta ask him these things." Another thing I'm interested in is The Utility Expo that you're going to be a big part of. Yeah, that's coming up in October, correct?
Aaron LeBlanc: Yeah, I can't wait. That's a good time.
Taylor White: So what are you doing there? You're going to be there, you're going to be at the show, right?
Aaron LeBlanc: Yeah, I went two years ago, in 2023. And the area I'm from, like, it's not a big city. It's funny, every time I'm at the airport here, I leave and there are like three people in the lobby. Going from that to not only the city but the expo itself, like half of it's indoors and half of it's outdoors. The indoors alone, you could probably fit like hundreds of line trucks inside this building. It's just massive.
Taylor White: It's in Louisville?
Aaron LeBlanc: Yeah, yeah, exactly, in Louisville, Kentucky. And when you walk in there, it's just almost overwhelming. It was like Disneyland for me showed up, just line trucks everywhere, inside and out. What's really cool is the companies let you mess around with their stuff. There's literally a line truck out back with a 70-foot boom, and they take even not just linemen but members of the public. They'll take you up in the boom 70 feet up in the air and you can see the whole fairgrounds. It's really cool.
What's neat is most of the companies that are there, they don't just have some willy-nilly salesman that doesn't know anything about the tools. They have engineers there, they have executives, they have people that really put their heart and soul into the company and they understand the tools. So every single booth you stop by, oftentimes it's the owners of the company as well. So any questions you have, they got answers. And then they'll let you try it out. Sometimes they'll actually have equipment there. If it's a cutting tool, they'll have wire there and let you actually use the tool to cut it and compare it to other tools. If there are any new products, it's going to be there for sure. And any company in North America that has anything to do with the trade at all, they're going to be there. It's the go-to place to be if you're a lineman and you want to learn anything about new tools. Even on the technology side of things, they have some companies that are showing computer programs that can be used to help troubleshoot. There could be fault indicators that help you troubleshoot the lines. It's wild. I definitely recommend somebody that's in the trade or affiliated with a trade in any way, shape, or form. It's worth going.
Taylor White: Yeah, I was actually just thinking when I was watching your video because you have a, what's your promo code for some discounted tickets?
Aaron LeBlanc: Currently it's AARON30. So we started off with AARON40 last month for 40% off. This month it's AARON30.
Taylor White: Yeah, well, I'm probably going to use that code because even though I'm not in that industry, I just think it's so cool. I've always been really obsessed, like I like trucks, like I always make sure when we buy dump trucks, like we spec them out. So like utility trucks are so cool to me. Like the trucks that you guys, like bucket trucks, are really neat. And I think it's really cool just how you guys kind of fit them all up and you kind of have everything together. Yeah, it's just an interesting trade to me and I've never been able to indulge myself, but then I have some buddies that own some businesses that do this work, and I think that would be a really cool thing. So I was actually thinking, I'm like, "You know what? I got some free time in October I'm going to make and I want to come down to Louisville for sure and see it."
Aaron LeBlanc: Oh, that'd be awesome.
Taylor White: Yeah, because I just think it would be really cool. Yeah. So if people want to follow up with you or see where your stuff's at, like you post almost weekly or more on YouTube, correct?
Aaron LeBlanc: That's correct. I try to at least hit a video up once a week. Yeah, I don't really have a schedule. When I started my YouTube channel, they were saying, "You know, you have to post at Wednesday, 8:00 o'clock or else it's not gonna work."
Taylor White: I don't do a schedule because then you gotta hold yourself to it and it burns you out.
Aaron LeBlanc: It burns you out. It takes the fun away from it. I post when I have a chance. This weekend, I think I dropped two videos within three days or something like that.
Taylor White: You had one like nine days ago, then four days ago. I'm like, "Dang, he's pumping them out."
Aaron LeBlanc: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So sometimes if I know something's coming up, if I get a vacation or if I know I'm going to be busy for the next three weeks, I might put something together and then just let it sit in the background and then drop it a week and a half later just so there's not a big gap in between them.
Taylor White: That's awesome. So you're on Instagram and everything as well, too?
Aaron LeBlanc: Yeah, so I don't, mainly I use Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, very rarely TikTok, but mostly Instagram and Facebook for direct messaging communication. I drop posts once in a while, just sometimes I'll see something interesting that I'm like, "Oh, wow, this is crazy," but it's not something I can make a video out of, but I still want to capture it. So I'll put that kind of stuff on Instagram. I stay away from TikTok as much as I can because the pirating and the, it's just, I don't like TikTok at all.
Taylor White: It's an odd app. Where did Bobsdecline come from, the name?
Aaron LeBlanc: So I've got a video, actually, it's called "Who is Bobsdecline?" It's probably like 18 minutes long, so check that out. It's just a black background and it has my face with my shades on, just looking awkwardly, staring into the photo. That explains everything. To give you the quick rundown, back when I was in high school, when I grew up, it was when computers started, like I graduated in the late '90s, and it got to the point where you had to submit book reports on computers. Stuff started having to be typed up. I grew up, we never had a computer or any technology in my home whatsoever. So when I was in grade nine, 10, 11, 12, we had to use computers for our schoolwork. I had to set up an account at a local library and had to leave from the school, go to the library to type up these book reports. You had to set up an account, they wanted an email, I didn't have an email at all.
My grandfather's name was Bob, so at first I just tried like "aaron@hotmail.com" or something, and the library person helping me out was like, "No, no, like every name's going to be taken, so you have to put 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 at the end of it." And I didn't want to have to remember a bunch of numbers and I wanted something original, so I tried "Bob," and that didn't work. And I tried a whole bunch of options, nothing was working. And there was a song called "The Decline," it was by a punk band called NOFX. It was an 18-minute-long song that me and my buddies all loved listening to.
Taylor White: 18-minute-long song?
Aaron LeBlanc: Yeah, yeah, 18-minute-long punk song. There's no verse, no chorus, it's just this guy going on this big rant about society for 18 minutes, punk style, and we were all into it. So I just tried "Bobsdecline" and it worked. So that was my email for many, many, many years. And when I sat down and made my first YouTube video, when I signed up for a YouTube account, it asked for my email. My email is just Bobsdecline. So I just put the name of my channel, Bobsdecline, started making a few line videos, they were getting views, and I was kind of panicking. I was like, "Oh my God, this sounds so ridiculous. Like Bobsdecline, it sounds horrible." And I was like, "You know what? I'm just going to roll with it because it's original, it's easy to remember, kind of got a weird ring to it."
Taylor White: I like it. I think it's, I think it's awesome.
Aaron LeBlanc: Yeah, well, it's more like everyone's got, you know, "East Coast Lineman," "West Coast Lineman," "Northeast Lineman," like everything's lineman, lineman, lineman. And I found that the term, for one, like I said, it is super easy to remember, and it kind of grabs people's attention that aren't in the trade, too. I've got about a 50/50 viewership of linemen and people just from the general public that want to learn about our trade.
Taylor White: And if you want to branch out and show some other stuff as well, too, people aren't like, "Why am I watching this video that's not about lineman stuff and it's named 'Lineman?'"
Aaron LeBlanc: Yeah, exactly.
Taylor White: It's smart that way for your branding's sake. But that's really cool, man. I really appreciate you coming on today, Aaron, and talking to us about that. And I know everyone can use AARON30 for the Utility Expo coming up in Louisville, Kentucky on October 5 to the 7.
Aaron LeBlanc: Fifth to the, yeah, because I'm flying out on the 4th, I believe, so it'll be the 5th to the 7th, yeah.
Taylor White: Awesome. Well, thank you very much for coming here, man, and I guess I'll see you in October.
Aaron LeBlanc: Yeah, I can't wait. We'll have to hook up and shake your hand for sure.
Taylor White: 100%.
Aaron LeBlanc: Hopefully a lot of the viewers are going to head down, too. And the code, AARON30, it's A A R O N 30.
Taylor White: A. A. Ron.
Aaron LeBlanc: A. A. Ron. Some people still spell E R I N, but that's the girl's version, so.
Taylor White: Awesome. Well, thanks, Aaron. I appreciate it, and we'll catch you guys on the next one. Take care.
Aaron LeBlanc: All right, you too, man.
