Buckeye Career Center Utility Linesman students pose in front of a utility truck donated by AEP. (Submitted)

New Philadelphia, Ohio (WJER) - Buckeye Career Center officials are showing off their latest educational tool for the utility linesman adult ed students.  

American Electric power has donated a 2006 International Digger Derrick truck to the program that was at the end of a lease. It is used to drill large holes into the ground for setting power poles and also includes a crane.  

AEP Community and Customer Experience Manager David Wheeler says this arrangement benefits the company and the school.

“It’s really a symbiotic kind of relationship. We end up helping and providing these kinds of donations, but at the end of the day we get a great quality employee or employees that come out of this program,” he says.

Adult Ed Curriculum Director Frank Polen says this is an invaluable resource, as it replaces a similar truck that no longer works. 
  
“Certainly, as much as there’s manual work that always goes into it, obviously, the ability to use the auger and to lift the poles and things along those lines will make that job much more realistic and will make it much safer,” he says. 

Wheeler says one of these trucks new would probably cost over $100,000. He estimates the lease value at auction on this one would be between $6,000 and $10,000.

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