Halton Youngblood shakes his head when he remembers his first day on the job after graduating from a two-year auto technician’s course more than 20 years ago. “I worked on everything from lawn mowers to cars when I was a kid, and by the time I graduated from tech school I was pretty sure I knew everything,” Youngblood chuckles. “On my first day, an older mechanic working beside me asked me one simple technical question, and I was stumped — didn’t have a clue. That’s when I realized that education is one thing, but experience is everything when it comes to being a mechanic. Tech school is a good start, but you’ve got to work with good mentors to really learn your job.”
Since that day, Youngblood has gained the depth of experience required to be the shop foreman for Coggins Construction of Thomaston, Ga., where he handles maintenance and repairs for more than 50 pieces of heavy equipment. His years of on-the-job training at auto shops, body shops and eventually with heavy equipment prepared him for the varied demands of the job.
“I enjoy never doing the same thing two days in a row,” he says. “Welding, painting, field repairs, shop repairs, maintenance — it never gets boring.”
Youngblood works from a 2006 Peterbilt 335 powered by a C7 Caterpillar engine, ahead of an Eaton Fuller eight-speed manual transmission. The truck, bought used with low miles, came with a 14-foot Service Truck International service body equipped with an 8,000-pound Tiger Crane, Lincoln 250 welder/generator, American Eagle drawer sets, and a PTO-powered hydraulic Ingersoll Rand air compressor.
The truck was field-ready, but Youngblood fine-tuned it to his preferences. He added as many as six work lights inside each compartment on the service body, plus two floodlights on each rear corner to illuminate nighttime repairs. The STI body came with a single Reel- craft air hose reel that dispensed from the rear of the body. He turned the reel so it dispenses out the door of the rear compartment.
“Then I mounted two more reels at the top of that compartment, one for a bigger air hose and one for a power cord. I permanently connected the power cord reel to my generator, so I don’t have to plug in power cords to my generator. I just fire up the generator, pull out the cord and I’m ready to go.”
His favorite addition to the truck was in the front compartment on the driver’s side, above the American Eagle drawers. He fabricated special holders for all his air- and battery-powered tools from a unimount bar and PVC pipe.
“I can just walk up and grab what I need, never have to open drawers,” he says. “That’s my favorite thing I added to the truck.”
A 55-gallon waste oil tank mounted in the bed of the service body is connected to a 25-foot-long, one-inch diameter hose dispensed from a Reelcraft hose reel with Power-Return.
“It’s not bad pulling the hose out, but the Power-Return is definitely nice when it’s time to pull it in,” he says.
After careful consideration, Youngblood carries no laptop or scan tools.
“I ran the numbers,” he says. “They want $1,500 for the equipment and $3,000 to update the software each year, and I still wouldn’t have full access to what a Cat dealership mechanic has. Plus, we also run a lot of Komatsu machines, so that’s another couple thousand dollars to get set up for that brand. The cost of the laptop and diagnostic software was more expensive than the cost of having a dealership tech come do it for us. We can do that several times a year for each brand of equipment, and still be money ahead. We don’t need that sort of diagnostics very often; so we save money.”
Plans for the future include an air/hydraulic press to make hydraulic hoses once he figures out how to economically manage the associated inventory.
“I’m going to stock 50 feet of six different sizes of hydraulic hose, plus two of every hydraulic fitting from quarter-inch up through one-inch,” he says. “I’ve got to figure out how to keep all of that organized, but compared to the downtime of removing a hose and driving 45 minutes back to the shop to build it, I think I can save the company money and get the equipment back to work faster. My job is to use the truck to fix things fast and save the company money, and the hydraulic hose press will help me do both.”
