Contact Us: (800) 262-5131    |    Outage Map

News

A Final Read: Ricky Nichols Retires

May 3rd, 2021

Fishing, gardening, woodworking and time with the grandkids. Those are the things Ricky Nichols, OREMC Apparatus Technician, is looking forward to as he steps into retirement on May 12, 2020, after 35 years with the co-op.

Like many employees back in the 1980s, Ricky began his tenure at OREMC as a meter reader collector. He had been working with his dad doing painting and carpentry work, but was interested in a benefitted position and OREMC was viewed as a good place to be.

“I was assigned to work with Serviceman David Page, which I did for eight to nine years before becoming a meter foreman,” Ricky recalls. “I was over six meter readers and we did service connects, disconnects and changeouts.” He points out that back then you had to physically connect and disconnect service to a meter. “Then we walked up to the meter, actually wrote down the meter reading and had collection list. Now service can be connected and disconnected from the office. Back then I would not have believed how technology would change things.”

Ricky moved up the ranks to meter technician before moving over to the Apparatus Department and becoming an apparatus technician. In his current role he has been responsible for a myriad of things: substation maintenance and updates, special metering work including building and testing current transformers over 600 amps, maintenance on the solar farm, regulator inspections and building out SCADA.

“About 95 percent of what I’ve been doing is in the field working with Brandon Jordan or a line crew,” Ricky says. “It is a very cross-functional job and I’ve gotten to work with some of our younger crew . . . we have a good lot of bright, committed and hard-working young men coming up.”

While technology has streamlined Ricky’s work over the years, it still takes a human touch to get it done. “And when a storm hits and we all come together, we each know our roles and are there supporting one another as we work together to get the power back on,” Ricky says.

These are the times when that family feel really shines brightest at OREMC. It is that sense of family that drew Ricky to the co-op in the first place, and what remains steadfast as he passes the torch to the next generation.

A Final Read: Ricky Nichols Retires

‹ All News