A day in the life of a power lineman runs 10 to 16 hours, starts before sunrise, and looks completely different on a distribution crew, a transmission crew, or a storm callout. This page walks through actual hour-by-hour schedules across all three so you know what you are signing up for before you commit four years of apprenticeship to it.
Most journeyman linemen on a regular distribution crew work 4-10s or 5-8s, get to the yard by 6:00 or 6:30 a.m., tailboard the job, work outage windows or hot, eat lunch on the truck, and roll back to the yard by mid-afternoon. Transmission crews on travel work run 6-10s or 7-12s on per diem. Storm crews work 16-on, 8-off until the lights come back on.
The pay swings just as wide. A distribution JL on a 40-hour week clears $1,800 to $2,800 gross. A transmission JL on a 70-hour storm week clears $5,000 to $8,000 gross with per diem stacked on top.
Distribution crews run 4kV through 35kV, work from buckets and poles, and handle the bread-and-butter work: pole replacements, transformer changeouts, service drops, fault response, and tree-related rebuilds. Most utility distribution crews run two or three men plus a foreman.
| Time | Activity |
|---|---|
| 5:30 a.m. | Wake up, coffee, pack lunch and water |
| 6:15 a.m. | Arrive at yard. Check truck (fluids, hydraulics, dielectric test sticker, FR clothing, hooks, hot sticks) |
| 6:30 a.m. | Tailboard with foreman. Print review, switching order, MAD review, job briefing signed |
| 7:00 a.m. | Roll to first job. Drive 15 to 60 minutes |
| 7:30 a.m. | Set up. Cones, signs, ground the truck if needed, identify primary and secondary, isolate and ground if working dead |
| 8:00 a.m. | Job 1: pole change-out, transformer swap, or fault repair |
| 11:30 a.m. | Lunch on the truck. Most crews eat where they stop |
| 12:00 p.m. | Job 2: service work, secondary, or tie-in |
| 2:30 p.m. | Pack up, restock truck, head to yard |
| 3:30 p.m. | Yard. Park truck, fuel up, paperwork, time entry |
| 4:00 p.m. | Off the clock if it is a 4-10. Home by 4:30 p.m. |
Standard crew work pays straight time at JL scale, $40 to $65 per hour depending on local. Anything past 8 hours kicks to time-and-a-half on most utility contracts. Sundays and holidays run double time.
Outage callouts blow up the schedule. A car-pole accident at 2:00 p.m. moves the whole crew to the wreck for 4 to 8 hours of overtime. Squirrel-faulted transformer in a subdivision adds another stop. Customer-melt service calls in summer push crews into the dark. Plan for 8, work 10 to 12.
Transmission crews run 69kV through 765kV. Bigger structures (lattice, steel pole, H-frame), bigger right-of-ways, more travel, more rigging. The work is structural as much as electrical: setting steel, stringing conductor with pullers and tensioners, changing insulators, sock-line work, helicopter assists. Crew size runs 6 to 15 plus foremen and operators.
| Time | Activity |
|---|---|
| 4:30 a.m. | Up, coffee, hotel breakfast if open |
| 5:30 a.m. | Truck pickup at hotel parking lot. Foreman drives the line truck |
| 6:00 a.m. | Yard or staging area. Tailboard. Review structure prints, conductor sag charts, OSHA 1926 Subpart V briefing |
| 6:30 a.m. | Caravan to ROW. Sometimes 60 to 90 minutes off pavement |
| 7:30 a.m. | Set up pullers and tensioners, fly sock line with drone or helicopter, ground rolling stock |
| 8:30 a.m. | Stringing or insulator work. Sometimes hot stick work on energized 230kV or 345kV bare-hand jobs |
| 12:00 p.m. | Lunch on the ROW |
| 12:30 p.m. | Continue stringing, sagging, or steel work |
| 4:30 p.m. | Pack tools, secure conductor, walk down structures |
| 5:30 p.m. | Caravan back to yard or hotel |
| 6:30 p.m. | Hotel. Dinner with the crew or solo. In bed by 9:30 p.m. |
Transmission travel pays JL scale plus per diem ($90 to $200 per day) plus mileage on most agreements. Six-tens or seven-twelves are standard. Weekly gross of $4,500 to $7,500 is typical on a steady transmission ticket. Tax-free per diem stacked on top is the difference between $2,000 take-home weeks and $3,500 take-home weeks.
Storm pay is why guys put up with the rest of it. When a hurricane, ice storm, or derecho hits, utilities call in mutual aid through EEI's RMAG agreements. Contractors roll their own crews. You can be in your driveway Monday morning and on a poletop in Louisiana by Tuesday night.
| Time | Activity |
|---|---|
| 5:00 a.m. | Up. Coffee. Eat whatever the staging area provides |
| 5:30 a.m. | Tailboard at staging (school parking lot, fairgrounds, mall). Job assignments handed out |
| 6:00 a.m. | Roll to assigned circuit. Often 30 to 90 minutes from staging |
| 6:30 a.m. | Patrol the circuit. Note broken poles, downed primary, blown transformers, services on the ground |
| 7:00 a.m. | Start work. Set poles, frame, dress, transfer, energize back-feeds, restore customers |
| 12:00 p.m. | Lunch on the truck. Sometimes a Salvation Army or Red Cross truck rolls through |
| 5:00 p.m. | Continue work. No quit time. You work until 16 hours or the foreman calls it |
| 9:00 p.m. | Pack up. Drive back to staging or hotel |
| 10:00 p.m. | Eat. Shower if the hotel has hot water that night. Bed |
Storm rules vary by utility but the typical structure: 16-hour cap per day, 8-hour minimum rest, then back to it. All hours past 40 in a week are time-and-a-half or double time. Per diem $100 to $200 per day plus lodging direct-billed by the host utility. A two-week storm callout has put apprentices over $10,000 gross and JLs over $18,000.
A typical distribution JL leaves the yard with this on the truck and on his belt:
A new apprentice spends $800 to $2,000 out of pocket on personal gear in the first year. Most utilities and union locals provide FR clothing and the heavy-cost rubber goods.
| Job Type | Typical Schedule | Pay Structure | Travel |
|---|---|---|---|
| IOU distribution JL | 4-10s or 5-8s | Straight time, OT past 8 | None to local |
| Co-op distribution JL | 5-8s, on-call rotation | Straight time, OT, callout pay | Local |
| Contractor distribution | 5-10s or 6-10s | Straight + OT, per diem if traveling | Regional |
| Transmission travel | 6-10s or 7-12s | Straight + OT + per diem | National |
| Underground (urban) | 5-8s | Straight + OT, callout | Local |
| Storm | 16-on, 8-off | OT/DT + per diem + lodging | National |
Storm season runs May through November on the Atlantic and Gulf, and December through March for ice storms and Pacific atmospheric rivers. Transmission work is steady year-round but peaks in the construction window April through October.
After 20 years on the line, expect:
Career-changers from HVAC, oil and gas, and electrical work usually find the schedule familiar but the physical load heavier. Linemen older than 50 cross to underground, foreman, troubleshooter, or instructor roles to save their bodies for retirement.
Distribution JLs on utility crews average 40 to 50 hours. Transmission travelers run 60 to 84 hours. Storm callout pushes 90 to 112 hours per week, capped at 16 hours per day on most utility contracts.
Yard call is 6:00 to 7:00 a.m. on most distribution crews. Transmission crews start earlier, often 5:30 a.m. yard call to beat heat and traffic. Storm crews work staging tailboards as early as 5:00 a.m.
Distribution JLs work weekends on overtime callouts and planned outages, which usually run Saturday or Sunday to minimize customer impact. Transmission travel crews on 6-10s work Monday through Saturday. Storm work runs straight through, no weekends off, until restoration is complete.
JL on a distribution 10-hour day: $440 to $700 gross. Transmission JL on a 12-hour day with per diem: $700 to $1,100. Storm JL on a 16-hour day with double time and per diem: $1,200 to $2,000+.
The pay is real, the work is steady, and the trade cannot be offshored. The cost is your knees, your shoulders, and time away from home. Career-changers from HVAC and oil and gas usually find the trade-off worth it. Office workers usually do not.
Distribution JLs at IOUs and co-ops typically sleep at home every night except during storm callouts. Transmission travelers sleep in hotels Monday through Friday and drive home weekends. Some travel JLs run 6-and-1 (six weeks out, one week home) for the per diem.
Browse current journeyman, apprentice, and groundman openings on PowerLinemanJobs.com. Filter by distribution, transmission, underground, or storm contractor to find the schedule and pay structure that fits the life you want.