Road crew life: Work, eat, sleep

YAKIMA, Wash. -- The night-shift guys repairing the Interstate 82 bridge over the Naches River don't mind when their 12-hour shift turns into 14 hours.

The tough days are the days without the long shifts.

"I don't like days off," 33-year-old Travis Truckenmiller of Port Angeles, Wash., says over a portobello mushroom sandwich at the Yakima Sports Center. "If I have days off, I'd rather be home."

Such is the life of construction workers on a contract job. Long shifts, long hotel stays, long stretches away from family. Truckenmiller and his colleagues on the night crew, 47-year-old Jeff Rohr of Puyallup, Wash., and 28-year-old Micah Saxman of Portland, basically spend all their time away from the bridge sleeping.

"When I'm not sleeping, I'm doing laundry or getting groceries," Rohr says between bites of a cheesesteak.

A mortgage broker in Puyallup, Rohr only took this job because he needed it. He had done construction before and, despite being the oldest guy on the night shift, he still has a strong back and a good work ethic.

"It was better than not working and not making my bills," he says.

But he's got a wife and a 17-year-old son, and he hasn't seen them since he came out here to work on the bridge more than a month ago. While life goes on back home, he's here working with torches, beams and heavy machinery.

Work, eat, sleep. Work, eat, sleep.

"I can't even remember what day it is," he says.

The crews have been busy since the beginning of August, removing beams, repairing them through the relatively specialized process of "heat straightening," and reattaching them. They're on a tight schedule, trying to get the bridge completely reopened in time for Labor Day weekend.

This morning, motorists will be able to get back on the westbound lanes of the bridge on I-82 when it reopens at 6 o'clock.

The $1.2 million Naches River Bridge project is designed to permanently repair overhead steel beams torn up in 2006 when they were hit by a crane on the back of a truck trailer. Part of the goal is to repair the bridge so it'll be foolproof in the event of an earthquake.

The contractor hired for the job, KLM Construction Inc., is one of the few companies in the Northwest that does heat straightening. Its owner, Ken Moberg, was a pioneer in the field.

Out at the job site last week, Moberg, a 62-year-old in white coveralls, explained the process like an over-excited chemistry professor. Gesturing broadly and talking fast, he described how heating steel at specific points and applying pressure at scientifically determined levels can strengthen and repair bent beams.

The night-shift guys don't need to know all the metal science, though. They let Moberg work the formulas and tell them where to heat.

"We just hold the torches," Rohr says.

Besides, the night guys are the less-skilled of the two crews, according to Moberg. They've spent the month doing a lot of cleaning, painting and grinding.

Truckenmiller took the job because things were slow back home at the pole-building company he and his father run in Port Angeles.

Having time off over here is actually worse, though he had a welcome respite two weekends ago when his wife came to visit.

"My wife is ready for me to come home," says Truckenmiller, who has a 7-year-old son waiting for him, too. "This is the first time I've been away this long."

But in this economy, he and Rohr were happy to get the work. The desire to work, a strong back and a basic knowledge of tools, welding and construction were the main job skills needed.

The pay is based on state-mandated prevailing wages for Yakima County and varies depending on what the workers are doing -- nearly $31 per hour for general labor, $47 for iron work. It's not bad, but the hotel bills take a big bite out of it, they say.

"They have to want to be here," Moberg says. "They have to want to get the job done. They have to work together."

They've done that. And now that they're just about finished, there's a certain pride of accomplishment.

"That's why I like construction," Truckenmiller says. "You get to see what you've done. When you do a good job, you can be proud of it."