Craig Daily Press

Craig — When Robert Daniels graduated from Moffat County High School in January, he wasn’t looking for a major to study or a freshmen dorm room.

He was looking for a job.

The construction season was over, he said, and he had trouble finding other trades that would earn him the kind of income he wanted.

So, he applied for a job at Twentymile Coal Company, an underground mine located in Routt County.

Daniels began working at the mine because “it was the only place at the time that was hiring (where) you could make decent money,” he said.

“Decent” is one way to put it.

When he started as a contract laborer, he was earning $18 an hour. By the time he left, he had worked his way onto the mine’s payroll and was making about $23 an hour, he said.

Daniels wasn’t alone in his choice to pursue the mining profession immediately after high school. Eli Buckner, who graduated from MCHS in May, went to work at Colowyo Mine about a month after earning his diploma.

To date, he’s making $18 an hour, or about $8 more an hour than an entry-level laborer can expect to earn on a construction site in Western Colorado, according to the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment’s Web site.

Daniels and Buckner had different duties and different plans for their future.

In the end, one would leave the profession while the other decided to stay on.

However, they both had one aspect in common: They were allured by the salaries that came with their jobs.

Expensive pieces of mining equipment, and the danger they can pose for both machine operators and those working around them, can prompt mining companies to offer salaries that give employees the incentive to work safely, said Ed Winters, Colorado Northwestern Community College energy technology director.

Subsurface mines are more likely to hire workers with less experience than their aboveground colleagues, he said, because less heavy equipment is involved in underground operations.

Daniels found the miner’s life lacked the glamour associated with some higher-paying occupations.

“It really doesn’t matter what job you have underground,” he said. “Most of it — 90 percent — (is) grunt work,” he said.

Daniels worked 12-hour shifts. His duties included shoveling coal that had slipped off a conveyor belt and hauling it back on the line. He would work for several days in a row, he said, and would then have about the same number of days off.

After about six months, Daniels quit.

The pay had been good, the insurance plan was great and his co-workers were willing to help him learn the ropes. But, ultimately, becoming a coal miner wasn’t what he had envisioned for himself.

“I just always liked doing construction — dirt work, that kind of stuff,” Daniels said. “That’s something I wanted to better myself in instead of being a coal miner.”

Turnover in underground mines isn’t uncommon, Winters said, adding that working conditions contribute to attrition rates.

“You have areas … underground where it’s cold, you (have) other areas where it’s 100-plus degrees underground,” he said.

The nature of the work also can detract new hires, he said.

“There’s a lot more physically-strenuous work that’s associated with underground mining,” he said, adding that surface mining also has its share of hard labor.

Daniels now works with a local construction company, he said.

“I don’t make near the money that I was making” in the mine, he said, “but I do love my job a lot more than what I did at Twentymile.”

He hadn’t planned working underground.

“I always told myself that I wouldn’t be one of those kids who graduated right out of high school and (went) straight to the mine,” he said. “But, it ended up that I had to go out there for a while until I could find something that I wanted to do.”

MCHS principal Thom Schnellinger said, sometimes, new graduates need time in the workforce to develop “a real worldview” before they enter a college or vocational school.

“Not everyone is made for” higher education directly after high school, he said. “We hope that they’re ready at some point in their life.”

Unlike his fellow alumni, Buckner landed a job aboveground at Colowyo Coal Co. His duties include cleaning the mine’s machinery before mechanics begin repairs.

Location made a difference in Buckner’s choice of job.

“It wasn’t a (expletive) underground mine job,” he said.

The salary helped, too. When asked why he signed on with the mine, Buckner laughed.

“It paid good,” he said.

And, pay has been an effective incentive to keep him there.

“If it didn’t pay (well), I wouldn’t be working” at the mine, he said.

Still, he said, the job isn’t for everyone. Whether or not the job fits “depends on who you are,” he said.

Buckner said he plans on staying at the mine for a while and hopes to some day move up in the company.

But, he has an alternative plan tucked away in his back pocket — a predator and varmint extermination service he’s developing.

If the business takes off, Buckner said, he might pursue it full time.