Abandoned by Anne Kim

Author:Anne Kim
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The New Press
Published: 2019-06-14T16:00:00+00:00

11

The Apprentice and the Intern

It’s 6:45 a.m. during the height of summer construction season, and the asphalt plant at Cedar Mountain Stone Corporation in Mitchells, Virginia, has been buzzing with activity since before dawn. Thousands of pounds of crushed rock are moving along conveyor belts to be mixed with hot liquid asphalt in a gigantic drum, while trucks line up under a massive chute to take the finished asphalt away.

The company’s nearby quarry has been running 24/7, mining eight thousand tons a day of the high-quality granite for which this part of central Virginia is known. Some of this rock will end up cut and polished for people’s kitchen countertops, or lining streams and roadbeds, but much of it will end up in Cedar Mountain Stone’s asphalt plant, processed into blacktop for the thousands of miles of roads and highways that crisscross the state.

Making that asphalt is the job of Allen Miller, one of eleven apprentices at Cedar Mountain Stone. Like any good brew, good asphalt is hard to make. “We have to have certain gradations of stone, the right amount of dust, and not too much asphalt binder in it,” says Ed Dalrymple, Miller’s boss and the fourth-generation owner of Cedar Mountain Stone. “If we have all of that in the right proportions, the road’s going to last.”

In many ways, Miller’s apprenticeship is exactly what young people need to ensure their lifelong connection to mainstream opportunity. Through his apprenticeship, Miller is getting both schooling and valuable work experience, along with professional connections, mentorship, and, importantly, a living wage.

Every day, Miller works from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. or later and then goes to night school at Germanna Community College in nearby Fredericksburg for specialized classes in asphalt technology that are part of his training. “It makes for some very long days,” he says. But if he sticks it out, Miller will finish his apprenticeship with a journeyman’s license in industrial maintenance; multiple certifications in asphalt technology from the Virginia Asphalt Association, which will help him land jobs anywhere in the industry; and four years of work experience.

Under the tutelage of a mentor at the company, Miller is learning how to operate, fix, and maintain the asphalt plant that is the lifeblood of the company; how to formulate asphalt so that it can withstand twenty years of freezes, thaws, and the weight of thousands of tractor-trailers every day; and how to test it so that the quality of the state’s roadways passes the standards of the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT). On any given day, Miller is out drilling core samples from freshly laid road beds, watching the computerized control panels monitoring the moisture levels of asphalt being mixed at the plant, or taking twenty-pound samples of asphalt to the company’s on-site laboratory for analysis. Though he makes just $35,000 a year as an apprentice, his salary could jump to near six figures thanks to the highly specialized skills he’s acquiring.1

Much More Than a TV Show

Well-run apprenticeship programs are a boon for both apprentices and the companies that hire them.

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