Fired up for a future with the railroads

Chuck Pollock

Chuck Pollock, a carman for Canadian Pacific (CP) in Huron, SD, is really happy with life these days. For five years he worked as a machinist at a welding facility in his hometown, struggling to attain the lifestyle he envisioned. A reservist with the Army National Guard, he accepted every deployment opportunity he could, traveling to Iraq, Ireland, Germany and around the U.S.  But life suddenly turned around four months ago when he accepted a carman position with CP, the same job his dad has held for 9 years. Fired up for the future, Pollock recently bought and is renovating his childhood home. “I don't mind waking up and going to work,” he admits, “and it's been a long time since I had a job I felt like that about.”

Working from a RIP—Repair, Inspect and Paint—track, Pollock helps fix every car on the tracks except for the locomotive. “We change out broken things like wheels, gates and doors—everything from the ground up,” he says. “We take the cars and put them back together, sometimes even traveling to the equipment that needs fixing.” Living in Huron means being surrounded by the kinds of crops that feed America—corn, soybeans and other grains. “We move so much corn and beans through here—there will be piles of corn 400 feet in diameter, four stories tall—and freight rail ships it all,” says Pollock.

In the National Guard, Pollock sometimes works with heavy equipment. While learning to repair railroad cars weighing 110 tons calls for a different skill set, he's comfortable learning from some CP employees he's known since he was a kid. “The railroad has kind of a military structure,” he says. “You learn your job, and you learn it well. It's a group of people working together to get the job done.” When he is not working on his home renovation, Pollock loves duck hunting, fishing in the James River and his new freight rail career. “The railroad's been here forever, and it's not going anywhere,” he says. “It's proven the test of time.”

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