A friend and the owner-operator of a small excavating company and I were talking about his workload the other day. He has one helper in a successful two-person operation installing sewer laterals, doing prep work for onsite systems and performing other miscellaneous digging work.

As you might expect and can probably relate to, this fella works sunup to sundown most days and he’s hesitant to turn work away when new customers come calling. Yet he doesn’t feel comfortable leaving his No. 2 to tackle any of the work alone. Consequently, he and his lovely wife/bookkeeper don’t get time off for vacations, or even to take a few days to recharge the batteries.

Why can’t you find someone to delegate some of that work to? I asked him the question even though I had a good idea what his response would be.

“You just can’t find employees who will treat each job as if they were the owner,’’ my friend said. Good, loyal customers are hard enough to come by, he explained, so he has to make sure they are happy every time they hire his company. One slipshod job or turning down a single time-sensitive project could lose a good customer for life, and small businesses can’t afford to leave that revenue on the table.

Which challenge is bigger?

Is the problem that few employees crave the added responsibility of supervising a project through to completion? Or is the issue that too few young people want to go into the trades as a career, as has been considered an emerging trend?

It’s a little bit of both, my friend and I agreed.

Clearly we have a job preparedness problem in the United States.

Chambers of commerce and other advocates of construction, infrastructure and agriculture business sectors have long argued American schools – both high schools and universities – aren’t graduating students with employment skills that are in greatest demand. Critics say students should be training as engineers, machinists, electricians and plumbers rather than lawyers, artists and English teachers.

As a writer and photographer, I would counter that a well-rounded liberal arts education can be a valuable foundation for many careers. But I understand their point. Everywhere I look, I see a graying of the trades. Most contractors I know, including my friend the excavator, are over age 50, and a lot of them are knocking on the door of retirement. They sincerely enjoy framing houses, pulling electrical wire, installing furnaces and pumping septic tanks. But at the same time, they’re getting knees replaced and popping a few more pain relievers to get through the day.

Calling all workers

Changing the trend in job training is one thing. We’re smart enough to know how to do that. Invest in our tech schools. Let kids know that it’s honorable to want to become a carpenter, plumber or electrician. We can make a compelling argument that working in the trades provides a good living and great job satisfaction. You are all a testament to that.

The other issue – let’s call it a lack of initiative among front-line workers – is more troublesome. I hear this complaint often enough to know there is something to it. Installers tell me how tough it is to fill out a new crew. They say workers are often unreliable. If they show up for work on time, they have to be taught the most basic skills. They don’t have the work ethic necessary to follow through with a good job every time.

Have we inadvertently taught young people that physical labor and working with their hands is beneath them? If so, how did that happen?

My late father, who would be nearly 100 years old today, did nothing but work hard and get dirty as a maintenance mechanic in a factory his whole career. He toiled with co-workers and they built great cogs – literally giant gears – to advance the American infrastructure in the 1950s and ‘60s. Growing up, he fixed the family cars, welded things when they broke. Why, he’d sooner build a mailbox from scratch than buy one at Walmart. Saturday was spent in the basement using his brains and his hands rather than wandering the shopping mall or playing a $200 round of golf. And he loved every bit of it.

Opportunity knocks

The country was once full of guys like my dad. But not anymore, apparently. Look at the onsite industry, for example. Many contractors tell me they can’t find workers who live for the daily challenges faced in this industry. And it’s not just pulling strangers off the street. Often, installers’ own children don’t show an interest in following in their parents’ footsteps.

I was talking about this phenomenon with my friend, the excavator. It’s as if opportunity is knocking loud and clear, but the young people don’t hear it. Rather than embrace high-demand, high-reward work and cultivate an entrepreneurial small-business spirit, students are pursuing something else, maybe a suit-and-tie corporate career.

Today’s new workers don’t see the wastewater industry or the trades the way I do. I feel the possibilities are limitless for workers who want to help restore an aging infrastructure and protect our water supplies. Think of the millions of onsite systems that need to be replaced, upgraded and maintained to meet the demand for a cleaner environment. There will always be wastewater to treat and process, and these aging systems have been ignored for a long time.

If you talk to random people on the street about popping the lid on a neglected septic tank, most will turn up their noses. But if you talk to someone who’s been working in the industry for 30 years, they’ll tell you they enjoy that “smell of success.’’ Our challenge is to convey a bright outlook for the industry to young people who could help move it forward.

No rest for the weary

Oh, my friend and I never did figure out how to lighten his load enough so he could take a vacation. But he said that while there’s always a lot of work to be done, he’s going to enjoy getting up every morning and doing it.