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Warehouse keeps co-op jamming, not 'jammed up'
By Walter Allread
He's not on the clock until 7 a.m., but Chuck Bennett comes in at 6 a.m. every weekday to open the gates at York Electric and, perhaps even more importantly, to start the coffee.
A 30-year co-op veteran, Bennett knows lineworkers need to hit the ground running. Actually, this warehouseman holds the keys not just for the line crews but also for the entire cooperative. As Bennett jokes, he often reminds President and CEO Paul Basha and Director of Engineering and Operations Denny Lynn how, "Everything comes through the warehouse."
Andy Jackson is only half-joking when he adds, "If we get jammed up, the whole place is jammed up. So, we make sure we don't get jammed up."
The only full-time warehouse staffers, Jackson and Bennett make a good team, one that represents York Electric's strengths. Bennett, has spent three decades on co-op underground line crews. So, he recognizes just about any of the 550 or so items in stock in the warehouse. Jackson, just 22 years old, brings an energy and enthusiasm matching the vitality of the communities served by York Electric. As he notes, "We're the state's second-fastest growing co-op."
Keeping the line trucks rolling — crews are usually on their way by 7:20 a.m., Jackson notes — takes a concerted effort. Aiding Jackson and Bennett are Jesse Miskelly, a part-time co-op employee, and John Podmore, who splits his hours between the warehouse and the co-op shop.
Dozens of other co-op employees, from member services representatives to staking technicians to the engineering assistant to line crew leaders, have a hand in determining or tracking what it takes to build and maintain the co-op's system.
Job tickets are checked and double-checked before supplies are set out for crews. The co-op keeps track of every widget and what's-it coming out of inventory. And that's a lot. Jackson pulls out an inventory printout that's 43 pages long, listing 13 items per sheet.
Take underground conduit, for example: At any given time, the warehouse usually has 15,000 feet of two-inch conduit, 10,000 feet of four-inch, 5,000 feet of three-inch and 2,000 feet of six-inch pipe, Jackson says. The latter sometimes houses the largest distribution conductor in underground service on the co-op's system, known as 750 wire. Bennett knows the stuff well. "A foot of it weighs 31/ pounds," he notes.
Although Bennett's been around long enough to remember when security lights came in one or two basic styles, he and Jackson now keep track of a variety of custom street lamps used in the newer communities served by the co-op such as Baxter Village, Madison Green, The Reserve, and Fox Ridge. These decorative fixtures and poles are selected by the subdivision developer from the Cooperative's approved lighting list.
The warehouse team tracks less expensive items just as closely. Saving members money is part of the job. "If a crew brings back insulators from a job, we'll look through them and see what can be salvaged and what needs to be scrapped," Jackson says. They also accumulate scrap metal which the co-op collects for resale.
Scrap metal trucks are part of a daily parade through co-op gates. Many deliveries, meanwhile, come from Cooperative Electric Energy Utility Supply (CEE-US), a materials and supply cooperative in West Columbia. Jointly owned by York Electric and 19 other independent, consumer-owned co-ops across South Carolina, the Cooperative Electric Energy Utility Supply (CEE-US) gives all co-ops added buying power.
 Cooperative-style teamwork is also evident when line crews return at day's end. Lineworkers who have had forklift training help in the warehouse, Jackson notes. "There's no use everybody standing around waiting on us when they can get it themselves," he says. "If we've got poles we need to load for the next day, we load them in the afternoon. It's more efficient and easier than loading them in the morning if it's still dark."
While lineworkers get the satisfaction of seeing jobs completed, it's different for warehousemen. For Jackson, the satisfaction is in keeping the co-op "jamming" instead of "jammed up." When morning rolls around, he adds, "We start it all over again. We never finish!"
But Jackson needn't worry. Bennett has his back: On a shelf just outside Jackson's office, Bennett has an extra electric coffee maker. "We haven't needed it yet," he says.
 It's in there. A small piece of pole hardware that lineworkers call a goathead, inset, is just one of hundreds of items York Electric has in stock in its warehouse or on the grounds nearby. The co-op stocks hundreds of transformers in varying sizes and designs, miles of both overhead conductor and underground cable in sizes for residential services and main feeder lines, thousands of feet of conduit, hundreds of poles and thousands of connectors, splices and terminations for both overhead conductor and underground cable. This inventory is not only used to meet the many different daily construction needs of the co-op's service territory, but also to meet the material requirements for the first few days of any major outage situation until other materials and supplies can be received from the Cooperative's suppliers. The co-op maintains an inventory of more than 550 different items — everything from decorative lights and poles for subdivisions to dozens of sizes of bolts, nuts and washers and, yes, even goatheads. |
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