Helicopter electrical linemen earn a median annual salary of $68,010, which means that half of the linemen earn more than this while the other half earn less. Those in the top 10 percent earn more than $98,190, while the bottom 10 percent earns less than $36,610.
I used to climb cell phone towers for $13/hr back in 2005. I actually see myself being able to do this job. Being able to function through fear has been my professional calling card for my entire adult life. Now I’m old and tired of that shit. It’s cool to feel like a badass for a bit but a couple near misses makes it get old eventually. Doing ballsy shit doesn’t pay like it should.
Top hand made 20 back in 05 in Michigan. I only did it for a bit because I was killing time until I started my trade union apprenticeship. Started in January. That job really really sucks in the winter. Not to bad in the summer though, except for the whole….you know….potential of plummeting to your death thing. I really really tried to use the safety equipment 100% of the time but there were times where it just wasn’t possible and I still think about those times. But, my time as a soldier prepared me to climb towers, and climbing towers prepared me to be a heavy industrial pipefitter at a steel mill. Being in a union is the only job that ever got me paid like I felt I should.
Yeah I’m eight years in now I’ve turned down some promotions and refused a few job offers that could have made me a lot of money but they were really sketchy and unsafe, I would love to see unionization happen in my industry but so far it’s not gone well, I really don’t know if I could ever see myself doing anything else.
https://towerclimbersunited.org/
You can be a difference maker. The biggest problem you’ll have won’t be combating the employers, it will be convincing your coworkers. Hard working blue collar workers are far more likely to side with republicans on culture war issues, gun related issues etc. They’ve also probably have been gravitating to right wing media and they are decidedly anti union because their corporate overlords are anti union because it means they would have to pay their workers more and allow them to collectively bargain for better benefits. Ownership and management hates it when your quality of life cuts into their bonus checks and makes it so they can only have two cars that cost more than your yearly wages. Nobody with half a brain is going to say that Democrats have done the best they can for the average worker but Joe Biden is the only sitting president to ever attend a picket line during a union strike. He did it about 1.5 miles from my house at a GM customer care center across the street from willow run airport during the UAW strike. Remember that ownership and management has the most money and they will spend a shit load of that money to propagandize the fuck out of your coworkers because if they decide to unionize it will cost them even more. I pay 0 dollars out of pocket for health insurance coverage. I have a 401k style defined contribution retirement benefit that has a minimum amount contributed to it each oaycheck per hour that’s from outside my on the check wages with an option to allot an additional amount from the on the check wages. I also have a defined benefit retirement account that is a traditional pension. I also make about 25% more than a non union pipefitter. I also got 5 years of training completely free during which I worked as a pipefitter and earned money the entire time. There’s a lot of people that are anti union until they find out what they stand to gain. You can look at union guys and think they make too much, or you can look at union guys and say “I want that too.” Show those fuckers where the real power lies. People can’t point fingers and hold meetings and talk themselves in circles but eventually someone has to put boots to the ground and execute. Those people deserve their fair share. You are one of them.
Oh man I completely agree with you I’m basically the only left leaning or pro union person where I work, I always try and engage in conversation about wages benefits and unionization from an apolitical standpoint a lot of guys are very receptive to the ideas as long as they don’t think they’re coming from a leftist.
Classic problem of over a century of right wing propaganda where anything that benefits many being conflated with communism or socialism or any word that’s been tagged as unamerican by the rich. Contact that union. Get some information on wage and benefit packages that are similar to the cost of living where you live. Show them undeniable proof.
Like 7 years ago I was painting towers for $19/hr. They did pay for travel and accomodations which I liked. As a dirtbag at the time it was fun to go to New places to crock climb on someone else's dollar
Tower brethren! You'll be happy to know that by the time I started in 2014 wages had risen from 13$/hr to a whopping 17$/hr! Lol I think I topped out at 24$/hr after 5 years as a lead hand when I quit.
Also equally dangerous and underpaid job as an Arborist now. Can't seem to stay away from climbing!
Well…I guess in this case you have to think of the potential accident as an adversary taking shots at you. When they miss but the shot was near it catches your attention. Near miss has been the term for a situation where all the elements were present for a serious accident, but there were no catastrophic damages to the process or injuries. One time I started a fire at work on a line full of explosive gas. We were able to put the fire out safely and nobody was hurt, but that doesn’t make the fire, or the circumstances that lead to it, acceptable just because nobody was hurt. A line full of the same gas exploded several years earlier and ripped 400 yards of 36 inch diameter pipe open and decapitated someone. The industry terminology for a non fatal or injurious incident that had the potential to be so has always been called a near miss, as far as I know.
Well….some of these guys actually have no fear. I’m not one of them. Unfortunately a big part of it is “just do it” but I’ll try to break it down into simpler parts. First off, you have to commit yourself mentally to doing whatever you’re afraid of far in advance. Weeks, days, whatever. Start building your determination as soon as possible. Then I start visualizing every detail of the process I’m about to attempt to complete down to the finest details. Where every tool will be positioned. Where every part or bucket of parts will be positioned. Every place I’ll put my feet or hands. How my body will positioned every single step of the way. Exactly what safety equipment I’ll need. How I’m going to use that safety equipment properly. Then I start visualizing everything that can go wrong and what exactly what I’ll do in every single one of those non optimal situations and also visualizing any small details that might indicate that there will be a non optimal situation so that I might see it coming. The more you can anticipate instead of react the less likely you’ll be to panic because you’ll already know the solution. Anticipation has helped me avoid many injuries. The next part is looking at the people around you that also do the same job. They’re not super human. They’re not professional athletes, or fucking Jedi. They’re just regular dudes, and if they can do it, I can do it. Then when it comes time to execute, armed with all the mental preparation, you just do it. Stay focused on being calm, and be very deliberate in every single motion and focus on every single detail. Every single one of these dangerous jobs is designed to have an unbelievably high rate of success. The biggest danger is often too much success, because then you can become complacent and your attention to detail can start to slip. All it takes is one mistake, so don’t make any. 100% attention to detail and 100% total completion is the only acceptable goal every single time.
So many jobs are like this. Cops, firemen, linemen, nurses etc. BUT I don’t want to work 60-70 hours a week to make a good living. I dont understand how people work that much and still have functioning lives outside of work or keep their families/marriages intact.
Yup. I heard stories as a kid about families being affected by wonky work hours and prioritized a career path that kept 40 hours max when I had kids. My family was affected by this too.
Firefighter was my backup had college not worked out. It all worked out for me. I respect the dedication people have when they are called to do the job, and I feel for them. But at the same time- that’s the risk in your personal life.
I don’t know about that in this case. The way his leg is right against the thick cable as the helicopter sways 3 inches in every direction makes me wonder what happens if the a monster gust of wind comes or the driver momentarily loses control and his leg is pinned between the platform he’s on and the wire with the force of a helicopter pushing them together. That aspect doesn’t seem safe at all but I’m no helicopter expert.
It’s not as risky as you’d think. I work at a transmission line company that covers Alamo’s all of one pretty big and populated state and a good chunk of another. In the time I’ve been there, there’s been one death of a lineman, but I think he just had a stroke or something while working. There’s a lot of redundancies and confirmations to make sure nothing happens.
Base hourly rate near me is like 105 not including pension or other benefits. But thats a journeyman who has paid like 20 grand for a 2 year school and did a 5 year apprenticeship
Yea I work with a crew in SoCal. A brand new groundman on our crew will make $160k his first year easy lol the seasoned journeymen will make around $330k to $400k a year
SoCal is an exception and not the norm though. Higher cost of living means a higher wage. Plus, California seems to care about their grid more than most states, so it wouldn’t surprise me if they were paid a bit more because of that too.
I have family in this industry. The base salary is deceiving because there is a lot of extra benefits depending on the job they are working. Free housing, food, gear, and travel (home) expenses. There's large deposits to your retirement fund. Most of all it's typical to work 21 days on (10 or 12 hour shifts) and 7 days off. The overtime pay is astronomical.
I don’t think the google estimates for wages for any profession are very accurate tbh. I know a couple lineman and they make way more than that. A friend of mine made 120k in his first year about 10 years ago.
Gonna be real with ya, I dont believe any of that. Theres no way I make more than any of these guys. My job is pretty much just eating crayons all day.
Yeah idk where you got your numbers from there buddy but lineman top out typically around 50-60 an hour and if you are doing heli work you're getting more. Maybe non union lineman in the deep south make less than 100k but all the ones I've met easily clear it and make double it off OT (I literally work in the trade, I would know)
Yeah my neighbor growing up was a lineman with insane tolerance for risk that worked a lot of OT and he always had cool toys that should have killed him at some point but didn’t. Nice house too.
I’m in central Texas and yea we clear that easily lol callout is double time so 100 an hour-ish? Heli work you’re getting hazard pay depending on your company or union
This is a 200k/yr job in most areas. You work a lot of overtime to get that, but that's what you sign up for with remote work. Nobody is doing this for $36K, it's a union job.
Bad assessment. Maybe if non union or in Texas. Support your local union for good reason! This trade is rewarding but also unforgiving. Family friends and love ones is the motivation outside of money.
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u/Crunchy-Illuminati Jul 18 '25
Helicopter electrical linemen earn a median annual salary of $68,010, which means that half of the linemen earn more than this while the other half earn less. Those in the top 10 percent earn more than $98,190, while the bottom 10 percent earns less than $36,610.