Rick Garland was roofing houses in Texas when he came home for lunch one day and his then-wife told him the news: "You work for Ellie Myers now." His mom had accepted a job on his behalf — a position at South Texas Nuclear Project in Bay City, offered by the man who'd taken over his late father's role at the company. Rick didn't ask for it, didn't apply for it, and didn't see it coming.

It turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to him.

"Thanks, Mom," Rick told me on the show, laughing. "It turned into a way better career than I ever would have had roofing houses." That was November 1979. Rick Garland has been in the line trade ever since — groundman, apprentice, journeyman, foreman, general foreman, company builder. His father, Joe Garland, was a lineman in IBEW. His brother, Joe Garland II, is a lineman. His nephew was a lineman. The trade has fed, clothed, and housed the Garland family across three generations.

When Rick joined me for this episode of From Boots to Boardroom — calling in from a vacation spot in California with, as he warned me, bears in the vicinity — he delivered one of the rawest, most honest conversations we've had on this show. No corporate polish, no talking points. Just a lineman with decades of wisdom talking about what this trade really is: rewarding, dangerous, fulfilling, and unforgiving in equal measure.

Born in Canton, Raised in Alvin, Made in the Trade

Rick was born in Canton, Ohio — home of the Pro Football Hall of Fame — and grew up in Alvin, Texas, in the Houston area. He didn't know his father was a lineman. Joe Garland never brought work home. Rick had no idea what his dad actually did for a living until he was already in the trade himself.

His brother got into the apprenticeship in late 1977 or 1978. Rick followed in November 1979, starting as a groundman — or as RL Grubbs described it on a previous episode, a "grunt." Two years as a groundman, then four years through the apprenticeship program, accumulating the required 7,000 hours with at least 1,000 in hot stick or rubber glove time.

The progression wasn't fast. Rick spent extra time as a seventh-step apprentice because the work available was mostly transmission — he didn't get his energized work hours until he came back to Houston and landed on a reconductor job, where he knocked out his hot time in about six weeks and finally topped out.

And then he did something that I think every young person in the trade needs to hear: he didn't rush into a foreman's position. An older lineman told him something that stuck: "Just because you top out tomorrow doesn't make you a journeyman." You were an apprentice yesterday. Today you're a journeyman, and your responsibility just changed — now you have to keep a young apprentice safe. Class just began.

Rick waited years before taking a foreman's role, and he's glad he did. "Don't be pressured into taking a position," he advises. "Sit back and learn a little bit."

The Day He Saw Brotherhood — and What This Trade Can Cost

Early in his apprenticeship, Rick was working on a transmission line for Houston Lighting & Power near Kingwood. They were flying in tower steel by helicopter — his first time seeing helicopter work on a line job. The pace was too slow with two towers, so they combined everybody onto one. Somebody back-bolting, somebody catching steel.

The helicopter came in with the heaviest pick of the tower and lost one of its two engines mid-approach. The pilot tried to bring it in anyway but ended up dragging the steel across the top of the tower. It struck an apprentice. It didn't kill him, but it was bad.

Rick was down at the back-bolting area. What he saw next defined his understanding of the trade. Journeyman linemen ran up and down inch-and-a-half steel to reach the injured man. They held him on their shoulders in place until the Life Flight crew arrived. A paramedic borrowed someone's belt, climbed the tower, and joined them.

"I saw the good and I saw what could happen in this trade," Rick said. "It didn't scare me out of it. I just saw how bad it could be and then how to handle it."

That's the brotherhood of the IBEW — the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Rick was quick to note that he doesn't want to turn anything into a union versus non-union debate. "There are some badass hands on both sides of the fence," he said. Good hands and bad hands exist everywhere. But the union taught him, trained him, gave him benefits and retirement, and showed him what it looks like when men run toward danger to save one of their own.

The Loss That Still Haunts

There's a moment in every conversation about the line trade when the room gets quiet. For Rick, it's the story of his nephew.

They were doing what Rick calls a routine job — changing out dead-end shoes on a transmission line just outside a power plant in the Houston area. It was a half-day outage in summer, with enormous induction in the corridor from all the lines coming out of the plant. The crew was working off ladders, grounding only one phase at a time instead of all three.

When Rick's nephew stepped onto the ladder to move to the middle phase — holding the steel lacing of the tower — the ungrounded phase got him through the rigging. All steel: chain hoist, cable sling, ladder.

Rick got the call during a meeting with the power company. The foreman said the young man had gotten "the crap knocked out of him" but was fine. Rick had a bad feeling — intuitively, something wasn't right. He sent the general foreman out. Then he couldn't sit still, so he went himself.

By the time he got there, it was too late. The induction had done catastrophic damage. His nephew was in his mid-twenties. He was going to be a really good lineman.

"It's going to absolutely haunt you," Rick said quietly. "It'll just sneak up on you."

The root cause was lack of planning. The crew had shown up without a hand line, which meant someone had to go back to the yard to get one, which meant the day started late, which may have created a sense of rushing — though Rick emphasized there was no legitimate reason to rush. "No job is worth having to deal with something like that," he said. "If we didn't bid it well enough, that's not on you. You do what it takes to get the job done safe."

After the incident investigation — where Rick acknowledged he ruffled feathers — his number one pet peeve became grounding. His brother's too. "It cost us," Rick said simply.

I asked Rick this question knowing it might be painful, and I'm grateful he shared it. Because as he said: if you don't find the truth in an incident investigation, you won't fix the problem, and it's going to happen again to somebody else.

Don't Let Anybody Rush You

If there's one message Rick wants every lineman — young and old — to hear, it's this: don't let nobody rush you.

Not the customer. Not the schedule. Not self-imposed pressure. Not even a foreman who's feeling the heat from above. "No job at all is worth losing somebody," Rick said. "If I tell some of these young guys that want to cowboy things up — if you've never had to deal with something like this, you don't want to."

This connects directly to what Jeff White taught us about human performance on a previous episode: slow down. You don't have enough time, so slow down — so you can think through things properly and not let outside pressure influence your decisions. Rick has lived the consequences of what happens when that principle is ignored.

The Foreman Is Your First Line of Defense

Rick believes the foreman is the most valuable position on any crew — and it's a belief born from decades of experience. The foreman is the first line of defense. They're the one who decides whether to let someone do something dangerous or stop it. They're the one who needs to recognize when a crew member's mind isn't where it needs to be.

"Most guys aren't going to tell you their personal stuff," Rick said. "But you can tell when somebody's mind's not where it needs to be. If you've worked with them for a while, you can tell." His advice: pull them aside privately, ask if they're okay, and if they need to go home, send them home. Don't worry about the pay — take care of your people.

"Some guys will be worried about being paid. Well, don't worry about it. You go take care of that, we'll take care of you."

That philosophy — the money is made in the field, and you protect the people who make it — is something Rick credits to working for bosses who understood it and something he's tried to embody throughout his career. It can be done. You can take care of people and still make money. They're not in conflict.

The Coming Talent Crisis

The numbers are sobering. At a recent Edison Electric Institute conference, IBEW leadership indicated the industry needs roughly 80,000 new electricians per year for the next 10 years. AI-driven data center buildouts, new transmission and distribution lines, and aging infrastructure are all driving unprecedented demand.

Rick's concern isn't the demand — it's what happens to standards when demand outpaces supply. "My biggest concern is somebody coming into the trade and being pushed through, pushed along, just because of the need," he said. "Not everybody's meant for this trade. It's just because of the physical demands and the mental part of it — you have to have your head on right when you're working."

He's seen this before. In the mid-to-late 1990s in Houston, when transmission work was booming seven days a week, the trade brought in less experienced workers to fill rosters. Some of the apprentices knew more than the journeymen-level workers being brought in at higher pay. It created friction, quality issues, and safety concerns.

"I've dealt with this back then," Rick said. "I know that time is coming again."

His message to the industry: don't skip on training. Don't lower your standards just to fill a position. Don't be afraid to weed people out — you're doing them a favor, not a disservice. And the experienced hands in the field need to be on their game more than ever, because they'll be the ones bringing along less experienced workers and keeping everyone safe.

Engineers: Come Out to the Field Sometimes

I'm an engineer, so I had to ask Rick about the relationship between field crews and the engineering department. His answer was delivered with a smile but carried real weight.

"Come out in the field sometimes," he said. He told a story about walking a transmission line near Shreveport with an engineer who looked at the wood H-frames and said, "Man, these are bigger in real life." Rick's internal reaction was colorful, but his advice was constructive: engineers should spend some time seeing what they're designing, understanding the terrain, and not dismissing suggestions from the field.

"Don't disregard the people in the field," Rick said. He told me about a young engineering student who asked him for career advice at a restaurant in Corpus Christi. Rick's counsel: "Somebody may walk by with what you think is a silly comment — 'Hey, that's not gonna work' — don't dismiss that. Take a look at it."

The payoff is real: fewer change orders, better constructability, more efficient projects. As Rick put it, "It'll make the project managers happy." And as I've said throughout this series, the gap between engineering and construction is one of the most persistent challenges in our industry. The people who bridge it — who respect both sides — are the ones who succeed.

AI: Help the Engineers, Pre-Position the Crews

Rick freely admits he's "not an IT person" — he joked that he was barely able to get onto the video call for our show. But his instincts about where AI can help the trade are sharp and practical.

First, engineering. There's enormous work to be designed and pushed out the door, and not enough engineers to do it. AI can help streamline that process — getting jobs designed, workable, and ready for the field faster. Rick has seen firsthand how engineering bottlenecks slow down construction, and he sympathizes with the engineering departments more than most field guys do: "Put yourself in their shoes a little bit. They've got a lot on their plate."

Second, storm response. Rick sees AI's potential in predicting which systems are vulnerable — not just where a storm will hit, but what condition the infrastructure is in, how much maintenance has been done, whether there are rotten poles. That intelligence could help contractors know what equipment to roll in, what materials will be needed, and where to pre-position crews.

He also raised the perennial storm response problem: material availability. "One of the biggest problems with storm is you get a lot of crews and a lot of manpower in there and they want to go to work, but you're waiting on material. Nobody wants to hold material because it costs money in taxes." It's the same supply chain challenge Darrell Hallmark described in his episode — and AI could help predict material needs earlier in the process.

Third — and this is something I raised with Rick that connects to conversations with RL Grubbs and Jeff White — AI can humanize the trade. Rick himself acknowledged working 60 to 70 hours a week and wishing he'd spent more time at home with his kids. If AI can nudge a foreman or a project manager to say, "This guy's been out four weeks straight, send him home" — the way an Apple Watch nudges you to stand up — it could help address the mental health and family strain issues that plague this industry.

Rick agreed: "You gotta recognize when somebody's not right. If your crew is not right, plan the day differently. If not, shut it down."

The Greatest Achievement: Building Something People Wanted to Be Part Of

When I asked Rick about his proudest career achievement, he didn't point to a project or a dollar figure. He pointed to culture.

Between 2014 and 2020, Rick helped build Mesa Line Services into a company where linemen wanted to come work. They knew the company didn't want them to cut corners. They knew they'd be told upfront what kind of work was available — no tricks, no bait-and-switch. "I wouldn't trick them into showing up for work," Rick said. The result was a company that attracted good hands because it treated them right.

"I'm proud that we built a company that a lot of people wanted to come work at," he said. "And I've been able to take care of a lot of my family and family members with this trade."

That's the line trade at its best: a career that takes care of generations, if you respect it enough to do it right.

If He Were President for a Day

Rick told me he'd watched the other episodes and kept wondering what he'd say when I asked this question. His answer was characteristically grounded: protect Social Security and insurance for the people who've worked their entire lives. Make sure the retirement they put into is there when they need it. Make sure they don't have to battle for the healthcare they were promised.

"That's my big, big worry point right now," Rick said. "Getting to that position to be able to step away and complain about the guys being in my backyard turning my power off."

For a man who's spent 45 years in a physically demanding, mentally taxing, sometimes dangerous trade — taking care of his family, losing people he loved, building companies, training the next generation — wanting to know that the safety net will be there when it's his turn isn't selfish. It's earned.

Closing Thoughts

Rick Garland's story is the story of the American line trade, told without filter. A mom who accepted a job for him that changed his life. A father he didn't know was a lineman until he became one himself. A nephew he lost to an accident that never should have happened. Journeymen who taught him when he was willing to learn. A brotherhood that runs up towers when someone is hurt.

His parting advice was classic Rick: "You run across that lineman that says he knows everything — you need to be careful around that guy. He doesn't really know everything. Build your teams accordingly and everything will work itself out."

Build your teams. Don't rush. Don't cut corners. Take care of your people. Slow down. And thank your mom.

Rick Garland, it was an honor. Stay safe out there — and watch out for those bears.

About From Boots to Boardroom

From Boots to Boardroom shares the journey of those who power America — from the job site to the boardroom, leading with grit, tenacity, empathy, and vision. Not every leader sits in a corner office.

Listen to the full episode with Rick Garland and subscribe to the podcast at www.frombootstoboardroom.com.

This episode sponsored by KYRO AI: Digitize work and maximize profits. Learn more at kyro.ai

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