Nancy was a Caterpillar field mechanic in Alaska, and was dispatched to a logging operation to fix a broken excavator and return to the Caterpillar dealership in less than a week.

with a 100 pounds of tools and a turbo she landed in Alaska, and spent nearly a week in Craig, fixing the excavator as well as a garbage truck, a diesel generator and a rock crusher.

She finished the repairs just in time to get home by the deadline. She was a hero.

She was also hooked on being a mechanic and generator tech that fixed broken things that hard working people depended on.

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When Boyce was working as a millwright at a paper mill but the mill shut down, employees were offered retraining benefits. Boyce took the money and enrolled in the diesel technician program at Clark College in Vancouver, Wash.

Boyce went through the Clark College diesel mechanic program, she took twice the full-time course load, graduating a year and a half later with a GPA of 3.99.

After two years working in Portland, Boyce looked up the highest-paying Caterpillar dealership in the country, and discovered it was in Juneau, Alaska. Going to Alaska, where people depend on diesel generators for their lives and their livelihoods

In the field, Boyce had to rely not only on her mechanical knowledge, but her general creativity.

In Alaska, Boyce said, anyone who does the kind of work she does frequently has to get creative. When something breaks, it might take three days for parts to arrive. If there’s bad weather, that three days can quickly become two weeks.

“The ingenuity of some of these truck drivers to make a truck run using anything — I’ve certainly learned some Band-Aid, limp-home tricks from my customers,” she said.

On one occasion, she stayed in Juneau to repair The Kestrel, a tug boat that helps transport fuel to far-flung villages. After more than 24 hours of work, she needed a different sized socket to finish the job. If she missed low tide, the ship would have to wait another 24 hours, for the ideal combination of tide and daylight, to leave the port.

“I didn’t have time to drive back to my shop,” Boyce said. “But I thought, the college (University of Alaska Southeast) is right over there and I know they’ve got a diesel program.”

She burst into a classroom, covered in grease, and briskly introduced herself before asking for the tool. As the instructor retrieved it, he asked her to speak to the two female students in the class.

Boyce grabbed the socket and said, “I’m making $100 an hour (in 2014) right now, I’ll see you later.” She ran out of the room and the students cheered.

Later, Boyce was invited back to teach a course in alternating current theory. She rewrote the curriculum and, for the final, had students build generators using motorcycle parts she bought on Craigslist.

In May 2014, Boyce’s grandfather died. Once she got home to Vancouver, Wash., and spent time with her close-knit family, Boyce realized she was unhappy in her job, in part because of the harassment was experiencing. She called her boss and quit.

Later that summer, Boyce took a job as a ship’s engineer, a dream she’d had since watching “The Deadliest Catch.” She sailed along the Aleutian Chain, from Juneau to Bristol Bay, aboard a tender, a boat that collects the catch from small fishing boats and delivers it to a cannery.

When the season ended, she returned to Juneau. At the local Fred Meyer grocery store, which she calls “the hub of Juneau,” she bumped into former customers who asked where she now worked. They’d been asking her former employer for her by name, they said.

Boyce was invigorated by the attention, and launched her own company, Power Tech. Business was slow at first.

Today, she has more work than she can do herself, so she depends on three employees. She says she appreciates the freedom of being her own boss, not only because she can choose which jobs she wants to accept, but also how much to charge each client.

In 2017, she was a nominee for the Association of Equipment Professionals’ Technician of the Year award. The same year, she won notice as one of the Alaska Journal of Commerce’s top professionals under age 40.

Boyce is hopeful her success will inspire other women to take up similar kinds of work. When she advises younger women, she doesn’t shy away from the harsh realities of being a trailblazer. She’s been teased, taunted and sexually harassed, made to feel like she doesn’t belong in the kind of work that she’s excelled in for years.




https://dailytimewaster.blogspot.com/2015/12/nancy-boyce-first-female-caterpillar.html
https://www.clarkcollegefoundation.org/captain/
https://www.facebook.com/nancy.boyce.16

well folks, why the hell didn't our high school guidance counselors tell us Caterpillar paid $100 an hour to diesel mechanics and generator mechanics?
Why the hell when I got out of the Navy didn't anyone at TAPS (Transition Assistance Program for Seperation)  classes mention that the GI Bill could knock down the cost of getting a certificate or degree at being a diesel mechanic?