The CWB Association Welding Podcast

Episode 247: The Welder Mindset with Clay Wagner

• Kevin Roy • Season 1 • Episode 147

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The CWB Association brings you a weekly podcast that connects to welding professionals around the world to share their passion and give you the right tips to stay on top of what’s happening in the welding industry. Subscribe, listen, and stay connected to the people who keep the world welded together.

From farm repairs in Saskatchewan to running heavy press brakes, Clay Wagner, Territory Manager with Eagle Alloys, shares how he brings a welder's mindset into sales. Clay dives into the realities of chasing an apprenticeship, adapting when companies shut down, and why learning adjacent skills can open doors when you least expect them. In recognition of National Volunteer Month, we also explore the importance of giving back and inspiring the next generation of welders.

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Opening And Sponsor Deal

SPEAKER_04

Welcome to the CWP Association Welding Podcast. I'm your host, Kevin Watker. Let's flip up the lid and sparkation. Attention welders in Canada. Looking for top-quality welding supplies? Look no further than Canada Welding Supply. With a vast selection of premium equipment, safety gear, and consumables, CWS has got you covered. They offer fast and reliable shipping across the country. And here's the best part. Podcast listeners get 10% off any pair of welding gloves. Use code CWB10 at checkout when placing your next order. Visit Canada Weldingsupply.ca now. Canada Welding Supply, your trusted welding supplier. Happy welding! Welcome, welcome, welcome to another episode of the CWB Association Welding Podcast. Now, April is National Volunteer Month on the CWB Association Welding Podcast, and we're shining a light and getting involved with your local welding communities. I have with me Clay Wagner. Welcome, Clay. Thank you. So, Clay, where did you discover welding?

SPEAKER_03

Oh, a long, long time ago. Um, probably I was about five, six years old, and uh I grew up on a small farm, and you know, you're on a farm, things break, you gotta you gotta take stuff to get welded, you gotta do some welding in the shop at home. And uh dad loaded me up in the truck, and we went to the local welding shop, and a little bright-eyed kid walked in this dingy shop with the smoke hanging in the air and the smells and the sparks, and I was just like, Wow, this is like a full-size, you know, erector set and yeah, steel on one side, and the other side, you know, there was finished products, and I'm like, cool. Yeah, how old were you when that happened? Probably about five or six, yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Five or six years old, yeah. Um, I saw in some of the notes here that you burned your first rod when you were eight years old.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah. It was uh in the farm shop. Uh, the old uh yellow comet welders built here in Saskatoon, I might add. Uh 180 amp AC welder, and dad had fixed some little thing and he wasn't the best welder, he'd be the first one to tell you that. And uh, so yeah, I I grabbed an old 7018 AC rod and I figured out why they called it stick welding, because uh at eight, you know, uh I stuck a couple rods.

SPEAKER_04

Nice. So growing up on the farm, what kind of farming did you guys do?

SPEAKER_03

Well, we were uh it's so long ago that it was it was what was like a mixed farm. We had some cattle, we had grain, and then we also had pigs, chickens, you know. So we were kind of self-sufficient. We we had our own beef, our own pork, our own uh, you know, poultry and and eggs. And yeah, it was it the old school way of farming.

SPEAKER_04

Very cool. Are you guys still involved with farming now?

SPEAKER_03

No, uh no, we sold the farm in about 85, 86, something like that.

SPEAKER_04

So yeah, that was a little while ago. I was I was born in 85.

SPEAKER_03

There you go.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. Cool. So, you know, like you grew up kind of of taking care of animals and stuff. So, how did how did growing up on a farm kind of um change your work ethic or how did that form your work ethic?

SPEAKER_03

The beautiful thing about animals is they don't care what day of the week it is, what what time it is, or anything, they need to be fed and dealt with 365 days of the year, and you know, if it's calving season, it's 4 a.m., you're going to the barn to to help get that uh calf pulled if it needed to be. So that was one of those things it it was you didn't know you were creating work at, but uh at the end of the day, you're right. That's that's what it was. It was just that there's a job in front of you, it needs to get done, and you do it.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, that's what I realized too, is whenever we get somebody at the shop looking for a job and they've come from the farm environment, it's it's always it's like you said though, like it's not that they're purposefully, you know, a better worker, but they just had to work. There was a job that needed to be done, and they're gonna work. So usually if they come from a farming background, you know, they're they're more hireable, I would say, because you they already have that, right? For sure, yeah. You know what they say, yeah. Every farmer's a welder, but not every welder is a farmer, right?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I have heard that a time or two.

SPEAKER_04

So, what made you not want to farm or leave the farm? Did you always think you wanted to go into the trades?

SPEAKER_03

Well, to be honest, um, I was the youngest of uh five kids. So uh my sisters and brothers had all moved away. Um and I probably would have stayed and been the loyal son that carried on the farm. Um, my mom had hell had some health issues, and so we had some tough choices to make. And uh dad had also run a portable sawmill back in the days when that was a thing, too. You'd go logging in the bush in the wintertime and saw saw logs in the summer in between uh farming chores. And uh yeah, so uh when when mom got sick, then we decided uh okay, you know what? I was a little bit young still to full-time help on the farm. And uh so we sold the farm and and moved to Adina, a little bit bigger, small town. There was a hospital and a doctor, and and you're only a couple hours away from Saskatoon. So you're slowly working your way to the major metropolis of Saskatoon. Yeah, exactly. Well, the joys of rural life in uh in Canada, right, is uh not every place has a hospital or a doctor, and and even the ones that have hospitals don't have full-time doctors.

SPEAKER_04

There's doctors that do rotations and that that's very true with the you know the freedom of living in small town Saskatchewan, there are a few drawbacks. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. You spoke about you know going into this welding shop when you were young. What was this shop? And did you ever end up working there, like professionally?

SPEAKER_03

No, I didn't end up working there. Uh, Lens Welding was the name of it. Leonard Johnson was the the fellow, big old burly guy, um, bachelor, super friendly guy. I think he's since passed away. Um, and he ran the shop right up until he closed her down. And and as far as I know, I don't think they have a shop there anymore in Litlaw. But uh yeah, he inspired me without even really knowing it.

SPEAKER_04

Okay, yeah, no, that's fair. So, did you then take a course? Like you you became a welder at some point. Um, you are in sales now, we'll get into that. But did you take a course or or how did you get yourself into welding?

SPEAKER_03

So uh after you know burning those initial rods uh at eight years old, I I you know, I thought it was cool and I stuck a couple things together on the around the farm just playing around and whatever. And we moved to town. Uh, thankfully, the high school in Wadena uh had a bunch of different trades courses at the time. So uh welding was one of them and and basic machining. So um I got to do a little bit of that stuff. And uh so the test that the that the shop teacher had given us was you took two plates, two quarter-inch plates, and you welded them, put them together, welded a bead, and then he called what was the the finger test. So he'd put the first plate in the vise and he'd put his big 24-inch crescent wrench on it, and he would tuck his pinky finger into the around the edge of it, and he'd pull and see if it broke, and then he his next finger and his next finger. Well, I was the only one in class, I lasted his whole hand, so he was like, Oh, that's a good weld, quite like I can't teach you nothing, I can't even do that. So, but I I will say though, the biggest kid in class, he wasn't gonna let that stand because of course his weld broke, so he got on there and got both hands on her and put some weight to her. He broke it, so my first weld broke, but mind you, it was only welded on one side, so that test.

SPEAKER_04

Um, you know, it's easily breakable. You know, I've I've done this test before. Um so yeah, for you to survive that in in your in your early stage is pretty cool. What process did you use?

First Shop Job And Automation

SPEAKER_03

It was uh we were stick welding there, yeah. And it was uh, I think that one was an old Lincoln AC buzz box. So uh the good the good heavy equipment that I was using in early on in life, so back in the transformer-based days. So yeah, then uh yeah, after high school, I was uh petroleum distribution engineer, or for those of you gas jockey for a while, uh at the later stages of high school, and uh, you know, helped pay the bills, kept uh kept the old car, you know, some gas and some fun money in the pocket. And then my dad happened to go down to the local welding shop in Wadena, Wadena Steel, and uh talked to Dave down there. And he says, Hey, my boy, uh, you can weld a bit. Uh, do you think, you know, would you be able to use some help? And Dave says, Yeah, I could use some help, you know. So he knew me because he actually would come to the gas station and get fuel and everything else, right? So one, you know, one time he popped in after, I think that day after work and he says, Well, I hear you might be looking for work. And I said, Oh, well, yeah, like, are you looking for to hire somebody? He says, Here, tell you what. He says, You come work for me for two weeks. Whenever you're not working here, don't change your current hours. And then he said, After two weeks, we'll evaluate it and see what you know what you figure and what I figure. I was like, fair enough. So for two weeks, it was a strenuous schedule. I was working seven days a week, and you know, he he opened up at eight and worked till five. And so if I had to work at the gas station at like three, I'd I'd work there till you know, two and then have a bite to eat and whip to the next job and work till 11 and then back at her the next morning. And uh, so at the end of the two weeks, he says, Oh, what do you think? And I went, I like it. What do you think? He says, You're doing good. He says, Yeah, if you want a full-time job, you got it. I says, Okay, well, I gotta give my two weeks' notice. He says, I would expect nothing less. Perfect. So I had another two weeks of volume base.

SPEAKER_04

It got you ready, it got you ready for the pressure of a welding shelf. What kind of work did they do at Wadadina's steel?

SPEAKER_03

So it was uh a lot of farm repair, uh, but they also did manufacturing in in the off seasons, so you know, during the winter and whatnot. Uh, so uh shank mounted packers was a thing. Uh, I think it was Valley Packing Systems, which was uh a couple of couple or three brothers that uh were out of Wadena, farmers from that area that uh designed this stuff. And then uh they've you know fabbed up the prototypes and then they run tests on their farm. And once we had everything all sorted out, kind of even before I started with them, then we would build those in the in the winter time, and in the summertime it was farm repair, some new fabrication, uh steel sales. He he gets lots of has lots of steel in the yard. And and again, being rural, you know, there's only certain amounts of places, you know. I think Wadina's probably about an hour and a half from Yorkton, um, you know, a couple hours from Saskatoon. And so it was a logical place to kind of harbor some steel. So, and and because I like to talk and and deal with people, and and he was more of a quiet guy that was very, very smart, uh, a genius level guy, him and his his brother, uh Leonard. They Leonard was an electrician, and uh the boys actually built a robotic welding table on on their own. So what yeah, had this old Miller Mattock, and it was all like archaic nowadays, but it was uh pin switches and relays, and so you'd clamp your welding gun in, you hooked your trigger into this thing, and so it was all set up. We had the jig, you would set the parts all in there, you would hit this button, and the air clamps would be like and they would, you know. That is wild. Homemade robotic welder. What year was this? This would have been in um 95, 94, 95, somewhere in there. Yeah, and Mr. Crazy. Yeah, after a couple years of doing that, uh, then he actually bought an ABB robotic arm. And so, you know, I mean, little town Saskatchewan in this back of this welding shop, and here's this robotic arm. And we built this table that circled around the arm, and it came off with a couple of bolts, and each each little piece had a jigs all set up. So you'd literally just okay, we're doing these parts, so you'd plop these three jigs on and clamp them down, and then yeah, boom, one guy could just it improved the time when I started. They had two guys welding, and then there was me and another guy building parts, and it used to take like what took a month to weld, they could do in a week with just one guy back there with the robot. So it was it was a no-brainer.

SPEAKER_04

So wow, yeah. If if you know people are listening that are scared that robots are taking their jobs, well, no, they're just adding workload, like you got to keep this thing fed. So if you've got one, you need somebody feeding that machine, right?

SPEAKER_03

100%. Yeah, he he built a lot of equipment. The press break that he had, same thing, it was all home-built. Um, and then even on the press, we were bending five eighths by two bars for these arms, and so it was an S band sort of offset for the wheel. And you know, you learn fluid dynamics and hydraulics, right? You start in the morning, the oil's cold, you got all your little switches dialed in, you start running this thing, and you know, every every five or ten you check them against your your known good one, right? And it's like, yeah, still good, still good. Oh, starting to get a little bit too much, so you dial back a little bit and keep going, keep going, and just to be that attention to detail. And yeah, the later in the day you got if you were consistently going, the oil got hotter, so you had to readjust the switches and and make sure you were getting the same bends. And yeah, he was he was a very, very smart guy, learned a ton of stuff, just like everything from A to Z. Um those old uh turret punch tables that I don't even know if you know, they used to run on like a tape that was kind of like you see in the old western movies where they have your piano that has that tape running with all the notches. Yeah, so he took took that thing, got rid of the tape reader, and actually made it run on some DOS program or whatever that he wrote the program for. He did like the coding for it. Yeah, what crazy? What is going on down there?

SPEAKER_02

A lot of down home ingenuity, yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, that gave. I mean, if you don't have anyone that is selling this stuff and you need it now, you're gonna build it yourself, exactly.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, and the thing is too, he got this old turret punch from a sale and you know got it for the right price because, well, who's gonna use a turret punch that has this card reader? Because how do you even get the cards made, right? Yeah, so yeah, he just looked at that and said, I can make that work.

SPEAKER_04

Ingenuity, you know, yeah, yeah. He knew what he had up here, so he was able to make it work. You bet. So, how long did you work at this shop?

SPEAKER_03

I was probably there about six years. I seem a trend I seem to have is like six, seven years.

SPEAKER_04

You know, six, seven. No. We're too old for that. We're too old for that. Okay. Uh my daughter. You know what?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, she'll get a kick out of that.

SPEAKER_04

Um, yeah, you're not the only person that that has told me that that there's like a six-year cycle in in some people that you just uh it's not getting bored, but it's you you're you have a yearning for something new.

SPEAKER_03

Right. Yeah, and in my case, um, you know, I was I was living in small town Saskatchewan and things were were good and everything, but it was sort of like I was getting older, I I hadn't found like my wife to be, and I wasn't seeing a ton of prospect where I was, and and so then had an opportunity to go work for Hitachi Canada Industries and uh and go move to the big old city of Saskamatoon. And uh and so then yeah, I decided what the heck, I'm gonna take the plunge and go test her out.

SPEAKER_04

Wow. Uh Hitachi, you know what's funny is when I was in level one welding, I took a pre-employment course, we actually toured Hitachi Saskatoon, and that place uh blew my mind to the possibilities, like so much processing equipment in that place. Um what did you do for them? What what were you working on?

SPEAKER_03

So they had all kinds of aptitude testing and whatever. And and because I had mentioned that I'd work on worked on a press break, they were super excited to hear about that because the their press break operator was wanting to apprentice welding. So you need to fill that position. And and I did did good with all of my fab related skills and tests and stuff. So then they says, Oh, we'll we'll apprentice weld, you know, give you the apprenticeship for welding. But we, you know, we want you to run this press break for a while and this, that, and the next thing. And I'm like, sure, okay, it gets me, you know, foot in the door and whatnot. So so yeah, it was a 500-ton press break. So two cylinders that were, I don't know, they were like two foot diameter kind of things, like big mass of it. It's one of those like a Titanic uh or the iceberg, I should say, where the you know, two-thirds of it's under the ground basically.

SPEAKER_04

It's like yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, 500 tons is enough. I I use uh I believe it's a 320-ton at work, and like we'll bend half inch in there. How how big was the stuff you were bending?

SPEAKER_03

This stuff was big. We were doing um uh like an average day was like a two and a half or three inch thick shell, and it was probably about six feet wide, and we would do like cones, and so basically we were doing two halves, so you were step breaking this thing, um, and and you needed like three-ton hoists, one on each side to to guide it through and and whatnot. And there was definitely you were doing the plumb bob on the on the thab table, and so I I got to learn a lot of cool stuff there too.

SPEAKER_04

That is very cool. So, how long did you run the press break for? Did you ever you go through that welding apprenticeship?

SPEAKER_03

Well, it didn't didn't happen like that. I uh I was there for uh my 12 months, you know, had my review, got a raise, kind of mentioned, like, hey, I you know, want to get into this apprenticeship thing, and they were like, Oh, yeah, yeah, soon sooner or later. You're doing really good on the press, though. We really like where you're at. Oh, they got you. Yeah, yeah. I I my heart kind of sank because I knew that uh yeah, they they weren't gonna let me out of that press job for a while, right? So uh ironically, there was a a guy that had started work uh the week before me who was working at the bay right beside, and he left about a month. He worked there for a year basically, and then he went out to a little shop out in Martinsville, All Craft Industries. And so I got to be good buddies with him in the year that we worked together because we were working shift work, so you know, in night shift, you'd go at the end of your night shift and have breakfast with the boys and all that type of stuff, right? And uh, so I'm I'm talking to Aaron one day and says, Yeah, you know, like I'm kind of disappointed this apprenticeship thing's gonna take a while, and like I don't want to run this press break like half my life and whatever. And he says, Well, hey, we're we're looking for guys out of lawcraft, and like it's right up your alley. He says, You should bring a resume out, told me who to who to take it to and whatever. And I'm like, Wow, why not? Right. So I went, dropped off resume, and talked to the guys out there, and they were like, Yeah, you you know, you're you're hired. When can you start? I says, Well, see you in two weeks. So the Hitachi was an exception, that was a short one, 13 months, but it uh got my foot in in the door into bigger waters and and got me into Saskatoon.

SPEAKER_04

So cool, yeah. So, what did you do at this other shop? What were they building?

Allcraft Ovens Travel And Closure

SPEAKER_03

So they had two sides. So one side was uh we what what the heck could we call it? Well, it was like van world, so pleasureway that builds uh uh camper rep vans and that type of thing. So we had done some of the metalworking for Pleasure Way, uh, and then they had a custom fab side, and that's where I went. And one of the cool things they did for like products was uh powder coating ovens and spray booths back when like powder coating was getting to be a fairly new thing.

SPEAKER_04

Oh, and they were built they were building the equipment.

SPEAKER_03

Yes, that's correct. So the actual like stuff you'd spray the powder with, you know, we purchased that, but the metal shell and the holders for the filters, we would build that stuff. But the big the big claim to fame was the actual ovens themselves. So yeah, we uh it was quite the process, you know, seeing how you'd crimp this uh this bats of insulation into these panels and they keyed together and and it was like a big Lego building thing. And and so being a young single guy, the second week I come to work, my my foreman Ben, he says, uh Clay, you got any plans this week? I said, Oh not really. Like, what do you mean? He goes, Well, you got any hot dates or any appointments? Or anything you can't miss? No. He says, Want to go to Calgary? Oh, sure. Cool. When when are we doing that? He says, Go home, pack a bag, and be right back. We're taking off today. Okay.

SPEAKER_04

So this could be trouble, or it could turn out to be so it was somewhere in between.

SPEAKER_03

It was good though. We uh yeah, I was like, oh, we're supposed to be gone for a week. Well, next thing you're buying more socks and finding a laundromat, and you're there for two weeks because it was like, Well, do you need to go home for anything? No, I'm good. You know, like I'm I'm living at my aunt's house in her basement at uh Saskatoon, or I'm in a hotel or eating restaurant food and seeing the sights in a different place. And so yeah, it was it was right up my alley because I just uh you know take things as they come along and and you know, is there a problem? Well, let's figure out a solution. I guess, like you say, it goes back to that that work ethic. If there's a job put in front of you, it's just like, what do we need to do to get this job done?

SPEAKER_04

So yeah. So what what brought you to Calgary? What what what was there? What were you guys doing?

SPEAKER_03

They were doing uh an oven. I don't remember who the customer was, but it was uh a large industrial company, and they were um building some type of computer-related stuff. So it was uh like a line, kind of like in a meat processing plant, where it was a big overhead line. And so the oven, you know, it went in and it went back and forth to get the cycle time in the oven and yeah, like through the spray booths and the whole nine yards. So I get there and it was like, you know, part of the lines up and the oven has to be assembled and set the burner stuff up and everything else. So so then because I was there and I didn't have anywhere to go once all the metalwork stuff was done. The guy that they had doing the gas fitting, he says, How are you with wiring? And I said, Well, I've got a car, I've installed stereos and messed with speakers and you know, fixed 12-volt issues. I was like, How hard can it be? Right. So next thing I know, I'm helping the uh plumber gas fitter do the control panels and the electrical and get through the the safety inspections and all pre-firing and everything. So yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Just a challenge dropped in front of you. Yeah, sure, I can do it.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, whatever. I'll make I'll make it happen. Right, yeah, for sure. So so yeah, then later in in my career at Allcraft, then uh, you know, on one of these trips on the way home from somewhere, it might have been some little town or in the middle of nowhere. We we worked all the way all over Saskatchewan and Alberta, basically. So little love Saskatchewan and down that way, frontier. So we were down at Honeybee, did an oven down there, you know, uh all the way uh Calgary, Edmonton, Yorkton, you name it. Just just pick a pick a point, you know. It might be a restaurant I've ate at, or you've been everywhere, man.

SPEAKER_02

It feels like it sometimes, yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Um, so yeah, like so you weren't doing too much welding then at this point at this company.

SPEAKER_03

I I still was doing a fair bit of welding and and fabricating and a little bit of everything. And then it was, I would guess that's what I was getting with that story on the way back from somewhere. The the journeyman uh plumber gas fitter, he says, uh, you're too smart to be a welder. And I laughed and I said, Well, I don't know, welders need to be pretty smart. He he says, Wow, he says, You you guys kind of got a knack for this, you know, with the electrical and whatever, doing this plumber gas fitter thing. You should you should do that. So in the meantime, I I hadn't ever got going on this welding apprenticeship. So I thought, well, you know what? Like a trade ticket's probably not a bad thing to to get, whatever trade it's in, right? So I I decided I'll give her a go, right? So he started apprenticing me for plumber gas fitter, and uh what was it? I got uh my first year and then came back to work at Allcraft and doing more stuff, and then I was in school for my second year, and I came back, and that was literally the the Friday before or that they were getting the announcement that Allcraft was closing. Yeah, it was just a gut punch totally after spending two months in EI and uh was called EI at the time, employment insurance, uh, and then finding out that yeah, that job you're coming back to is gone. So, and then no fault of your own, right? Uh, just kind of the way things go. So, yeah, I was just like, okay, I guess I'm looking for work. So my gas fitter had found a job. He says, Hey, come follow me. So I carried on with the the plumber gas fitter thing, and I did it for another, I don't know, year and a half or so, something like that. And I was kind of hitting a point where it's like, man, I don't know, the the gas fitter thing's cool and all, but I'm really kind of starting to miss doing the welding thing again. And and uh this point, I think I I was married and you know wasn't as big a fan of being on the road all the time. I bought a house, kind of wanted to be like at my house at some points in my life, you know.

SPEAKER_04

That's fair.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04

So like a moth to a flame, you got drawn back to the ark. So what what happened next?

Ace Years And Starting A Business

SPEAKER_03

So uh uh as things go in life, it's it's a lot of times about people you meet and connections and things. So when I decided uh that you know I was done my my gas fitting foray, uh that foreman that that asked me uh, you know, if I wanted to go to Calgary, him and two other guys from Allcraft had started up Ace Manufacturing in Saskatoo. Oh my, yeah, Ace. You probably heard of them.

SPEAKER_04

They're pretty large too.

SPEAKER_03

Well, they are now, but back then they weren't. So that was ground floor. Like I think uh I think when I went and uh give my resume and stuff, I think there was maybe 10 guys on the floor, maybe if that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And and then yeah, I was uh I was in my bay buzzing up all kinds of cool aluminum production things, not my favorite thing to do, but uh you know, they still gave me any of the extra custom fab and repair stuff, so that that filled the niche, yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, no, that's cool. They do a ton of aluminum stuff like semi-tool boxes, back racks, like you name it. They do a lot of cool stuff, but you're buzzing every day, literally aluminum tig sounds all day, every day.

SPEAKER_03

Oh, yeah. And this was it was Transformer days at the initial part of Ace was the high frequency box on top of the old shopmaster, and yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04

We won't we won't, yeah. We will not try to imitate the sound that we will wreck your earphones.

SPEAKER_02

Exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

So I had something here in the notes too that you also started your own welding business somewhere in there.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. So let's see, the early days of of Ace, then uh after the initial, we shared uh well, another company that has tie back to all craft was Sastim Custom Powder Coating. We did oven stuff for them and Ace's early days, shared some shop space with Sastium Custom Powder Coating. So once ACE got big enough that we were like, okay, it's time to spread our wings and get our own building. So the the guys you know found some property, set up a building, and we moved uh up to the north end of Saskatoon a little further north. And then in 2008, I well, hey, 2008. Everybody kind of remembers there was some economy things happening there and whatnot.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, that's when I got my uh my journeyman's was 2008.

SPEAKER_02

Great time to go looking for work.

SPEAKER_04

I got lucky, we're good. I was willing to push a broom anywhere.

SPEAKER_03

That's a big part of uh of things too.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, yeah, for twelve dollars and fifty cents an hour. Starting wage is a welder.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah, there you go. Living the dream, right?

SPEAKER_04

Like so, yeah, carry on.

SPEAKER_03

Yes. So yeah, so 2008. So so I remember that not only because of the economy got a little tight, but uh I'd been married for a couple years and then had uh our son. And I thought, man, you know, this economy getting like this, like I've worked places before and and had the fateful time when you come in and you're like you don't have a job on Monday. And uh I'm like, I I knew what that felt like. And at the time I was just dating and didn't have any children to support. So suddenly, once you got a little more, you know, a mortgage, a wife, and a child, you start going, okay, I need to take things into my own hands a little bit too. I gotta have a backup plan just uh just in case, right? Yep. So yeah, so I I started buying some used equipment. Uh ironically, there was a bunch of used stuff on the market at pretty reasonable cost. The guys were trying to get out from under. So ironically, right? I so I was working hard, uh, you know, pocketing every little penny that I could here and there, and trying not to get any debt to buy stuff and buying buying used equipment. And uh literally my first stick TIG machine was um uh Miller CST280, and I bought it off eBay from Florida, sight unseen. The pictures, it looked like brand new, but I'm going, man, this thing is like almost as far away from me as it possibly can be and still be on land, and uh it showed up and it it fit the bill. It it was every bit as new, uh you know, operated perfectly. So that was a huge win. And uh with that, I started doing evening weekend stuff at uh at a burger plant that was just down the street from Ace because we we did a stainless stuff. So, like I say, back the custom fab, I was you know, they're doing some conveyors and some some plant renovations and changes, and so then I'm building the stuff during the day, and then on the weekend it was like grab your hood and your CST 280 and head head into the meat freezer and do some stainless TIG welding in the cold. So that's so cool, yeah. Yeah, and it was it was it all fell together again. Uh, one of the bosses, John, uh, when when the guy at the burger plant said, Hey, uh, you guys gonna come install this? And John says, Nope, not our not our deal. Talk to talk to Clay. And so then that was that, right? I I had my company set up and you know, all GST, PST number, all that fun stuff, and and I was all sudden a businessman, you know.

SPEAKER_04

So owning a welding business, like you just mentioned, GST, PSD. For for those of us that are a little scared or like, you know, we want to do it, but we're a little scared of all the paperwork. Like, is there a lot to deal with when you're when you're running a welding business?

SPEAKER_03

There's a fair bit to do, but it's not don't let it intimidate you as much as it does. It's it's like anything in life. If you look at the the mountain and see how high it towers, you're probably not gonna want to walk up to the base and start climbing. But if you've ever climbed a big hill in Saskatchewan, like we got one big hill here somewhere, but Petrovka Bridge or something.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, it probably used to be a garbage dump at some point.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. If you ever climbed a big hill, you know that once you get halfway up, you turn, look around, and you're like, man, I've came a long way. So all of a sudden, that bit of further that I gotta go isn't as far as it seems, right? And yeah, it's a struggle because you're going uphill, but you just keep put your head down, keep plugging away. So, yeah, the the paperwork stuff is yep. I mean, let's face it, the government wants to take your money, so they make that pretty easy. How to how to set up the GST and PST number stuff, and nowadays with stuff like you know, QuickBooks Online, not affiliated, that not yet keeping probably not not ever, but but uh it um yeah, the the bookkeeping end of things is is a a lot easier now too. So yeah, just uh get yourself a separate account and that helps keep life, you know, a little simpler and and just sort of keep that money separate. And and then if you get big enough that you want to, you know, get into an incorporated or limited or whatever, well then you you talk to your your good accountant and get that sorted out when the breakover point is to go to that. But yeah, you just just don't forget the stuff like the insurance, and and it's like anything, right? There's gonna be stuff. I mean, now it probably is even easier to start a business because you can probably get on AI and ask some questions, and I'm sure it'll give you a whole big business plan. And meanwhile, Clay in 2008 was like, I don't know, Google was barely a thing. Maybe it wasn't, I can't remember it. Uh yeah, it was uh there was a lot of technology that just wasn't available back then.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, no, that's fair. Um, and in your business days, like you know, we speak of the winds and stuff, but was there ever something that went like completely south, just screwed right up?

SPEAKER_03

Uh nothing super major, but ironically, like that big burger plant that I did some work for, they went bust at one several years later.

SPEAKER_04

So it's like all these companies around you are just shutting their doors, like yeah, this is kind of like like walking through a minefield, right?

SPEAKER_03

You're yeah, we're clear, we're good, and then boom, something blows up over there, and you're like, okay, yeah, the world's still not safe.

SPEAKER_04

So that was kind of your for your business, kind of your bread and butter. So what did you do after that?

SPEAKER_03

Well, like with anything, uh, you know, when one door closes, another one opens. So um uh there was a place, SKL Trailer, that was in Saskatoon on Idle Wild, and uh, so I I'm I'm into stock car racing. So I I met uh a young lady by the name of Deb, and she worked at SKL trailer and she raced trucks, and and I was racing my little mini stock at the time, and she you know knew I was a welder and she says, Oh, hey, you know, sometimes we need stuff fixed and stuff custom built for trailer-related things. Would you be interested? Said sure. So I you know, it worked good. I would just drive my welding truck to work, and then usually I would get a text about three times a week. Hey, Clay, do you have time to stop by and look at a job or to do a job? Or, you know, and so I'd just after work, instead of heading home, I'd jump in the truck, go over there, and either price out a job or start working on a job. And so lots of lots of nights of getting home late and warming up supper in a microwave. And uh, I don't know how I would ever have survived without microwaves, but oh wow.

SPEAKER_04

So you've you've kind of gone through it all.

SPEAKER_02

Uh well, probably not all, but sometimes it feels like all. It's uh yeah, I've done a bit for sure.

Moving Into Welding Sales

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, yeah. Okay, well, Clay, we're gonna take a short break here to hear from our podcast sponsors. So hang tight with us. We'll be right back.

SPEAKER_00

The CWB Association is new and improved and focused on you. We offer a free membership with lots of benefits to anyone interested in joining an association that is passionate about welding. We are committed to educating, informing, and connecting our workforce. Gain access to your free digital publication of the Weld magazine, free online training, conferences, and lots of giveaways. Reach out to your local CWB Association chapter today to connect with other welding professionals and share welding as a trade in your community. Build your career, stay informed, and support the Canadian welding industry. Join today and learn more at CWBassociation.org.

SPEAKER_04

And we're back with Clay Wagner of Eagle Alloys. Now, before the break, we talked about kind of your your your whole career as a welder and then not a welder, and then back to welding, and then running your own company. And now you work for Eagle Alloys. You are a territory manager, is that right?

SPEAKER_03

That's correct, yes.

SPEAKER_04

So, what brought you to sales?

SPEAKER_03

Well, if you'd have asked me like in '94 if I was gonna ever get into like full-time sales, I would have laughed and said, yeah, no, I'm not not likely, right? I'm uh I'm a work with my hands kind of guy. So sales is just sort of not something that was really on the radar. Although, like I said, I did enjoy dealing with customers at Woodina Steel and selling steel and and you know, quoting jobs and that type of thing. So so yeah, like like anything, right? It's uh, you know, you you do a foray to uh differ foray at a couple of companies, and and uh I even had a little little blip into 3D CAD design with the Autodesk Inventor, which was was fun. I think that was actually right around that 2008 when I uh started my company. And that was the other reason for starting my company was I didn't want to be that guy that designed stuff in the office that when you're out in the real world and you're like, Well, how do you weld that? How do you get a MIG gun in there?

SPEAKER_04

How do you you know this doesn't work?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I don't know if you've ever been on that end of the the drawings where you're going to they expect me to do this, yeah. So and I generally was pretty good with the drawings. I still had a few points, at least when the guys said something about it, I could look at and go, Oh, you're right, I totally messed that up. Hold on, I'll be right back, you know. Yeah, yeah, tune things up. But yeah, so I uh after after all that, I how did I get into sales? Well, that it all kind of just fell into place. It wasn't something I was planning on. It uh I I like I mentioned I was doing some racing and I got, you know, I like to do hot rod-related stuff. So I met a guy and and uh he sold boats for a living and he liked hot rods and he needed some stainless exhaust welded. And I said, I welded lots of stainless pipe for food grade related things, I can do stainless exhaust. So next thing I'm helping him build a 33 uh coupe and did the exhaust on that, and and he's you know, he says, I'll get you more work. So yeah, I built stuff for his retired engineer friend, and and in the meantime, I met another one of his friends, and little did I know that was going to be pretty influential because Wayne knew Don, who's one of the two owners of Eagle Alloys at the time, and they were in Palm Springs one winter, and uh Don says to Wayne, Hey, you know any welders in Saskatchewan that would be, you know, could talk to people and be willing to do sales type stuff. And Wayne says, Well, I actually do know a guy that might be interested. So Wayne got a hold of Bob and Bob got a hold of me, and he says, Is this something you'd be interested in? And I went, I've never really thought about it, but I ain't getting any younger, so maybe not a bad idea to kind of look into this, right? Yeah, so then yeah, they they put us in touch and and so then we we started talking. And at that point, I was uh doing maintenance-related stuff at a small canola crashing plant north of Saskatoon, and uh it was a good gig, but it was like a lot of hours. It was we were very small crew, and I think there was three of us on the maintenance team at the time, and so there was like every second weekend was you were on call, and and I'm going, man, I'm I'm getting older. I wanted to start slowing down from all this excess work and not going the other way. So then uh yeah, I I says, Well, I tell you what, I said I've I've got some projects I've I've committed to doing for these guys. So I said, like, I don't know how soon you are looking to hire somebody, but I I can't, you know, the next three months I'm pretty much gonna be here. I gotta do this stuff, right? I've committed and I'm I'm not leaving them hanging. And they says, Hey, no problem. We're not in a huge panic. You you do that, you keep in touch. And uh, and Jason, Don's son, uh you know, him and I, we hit it off really good. We're the same age, and uh, you know, he's he's kind of taken over the the eagle alloys from from his dad, Don. Don's getting up there, he's ready to retire. He's uh he spent a lifetime in welding too. So he uh, you know, Jason, he he started the the thing that really brought me to Eagle was we hit it off right away, and I wasn't even working for the company. And Jason was messaging me and hey, what do you think about this? Hey, what are your thoughts on this? And he was asking my opinion and and like actually doing actions based on what I my feedback, and I was like, Well, that's awesome. He he's not only like wanting feedback, he's listening to feedback, right?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, yeah, that's a huge thing, is you know, you know, trusting the people that are out there doing it and like being being teachable is a big one, right? Like everyone thinks they know everything until they don't.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, for sure. Uh, and that's something like I know you you've been in the welding world for quite a while yourself, and I'm sure you probably had the same experience as me that probably if you'd asked me three years in if I knew everything about welding, I'd have been like, Oh yeah, I can fix whatever, right?

SPEAKER_04

Because yeah, I've been humbled many times. Like, I I know my skill, I'm a good welder and stuff, but like I'm not that smart when it comes to welding. There are way, way smarter welders out there than myself. So now that I'm getting to talk to a bunch of people, I'm learning stuff, and I'm my mind's getting open to like all the avenues that people have taken. And like, I'm I'm small town welding now. I kind of feel it's I need to I need to learn it all, I need to see it all now.

SPEAKER_03

I will say though, you even though you've got your most of your career in one company, you do work for a company that does. A little bit of everything, and that's that's great. You know, the not many places you'll get as much experience as you have. So yeah, that's that's huge. Yeah, I think you've covered a lot of the world. Yeah, I guess that's why I never left. No, and that's that's a good thing, you know. Um thing at Atachi, like the the other side of the uh the press area was the subarc pit. So I mean, I actually got to talk to one of the guys and and go into the pit and you know, see the subarc run and learn a little bit about that. Like otherwise, how would I have ever learned about subark?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, right. That was that was my first time seeing it in real life instead of you know in the books. It was at Hitachi, part of that tour.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah. And it is pretty cool to see that process. It's not uh not something that everybody gets to see. The the sad reality of that was the subark guy did a lot of back grinding. Like, I mean a lot. Yeah, not a super glamorous job when you get right into it.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, he doesn't just get to sit in the chair and play with the joystick. No, we're grinding.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah, and then sweeping the pit up and recovering, you know, a bunch of the flux. And yeah, there's lots of little things. It's it's like every corner of welding. You have some really, really good things about it, but somewhere there's gonna be a catch, you know, and you just have to you have to go. I can handle that, you know. Yeah, take the good with the bad.

unknown

Yep.

SPEAKER_04

So, what what does a day in the life of clay uh working at Eagle Alloys look like? You do a lot of traveling or yeah, fair bit of travel.

SPEAKER_03

Um, I mean, that we're joking earlier about having been everywhere, uh, and the sad fact is I haven't been everywhere, you know, even in in this uh province that we live in in Saskatchewan. When when you really look at the map, there's a lot more north that you know, not a lot of people get to, and I haven't been to all that stuff up north, you know. There's all kinds of little corners in the south that I haven't hit. There's also a few little spots here and there in the middle that get missed. It's amazing the amount of small towns and the things that are going on in this province.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, yeah. You never know what could be like huge manufacturing, and it's in a town of like 300 people.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, look at uh St. Bru Borgo is there. That's a perfect example of that, you know.

SPEAKER_04

Absolutely, yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Just down the road, Engelfeld, you know, and uh what is it, Schulte that's there. Like there's there's so it's not just the big centers, there's so many small centers that have big uh frontier we mentioned earlier with honeybee, you know, yeah, all over the province.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, it's just your giant mom and pop welding shop.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, well, and and a lot of it is is is all these hardworking small town people, and then a lot of times, you know, they're maybe farming or whatever industry they're working in, and they see a problem and they go, Well, why hasn't anybody done this? You know, and they start doing that, and then they start figuring out better ways to you know make that mouse trap, and and the next thing you know, well, they're hiring guys and they're selling stuff, those those shank-mounted packers that I was telling you about earlier from what in a steel, we would get orders that would ship to Australia, you know. Nice, uh yeah, the Seoul brothers, they would they would go over to Australia and and uh go do shows there, and and yeah, we sold orders, you know, around the globe.

Youth Programs And Giving Back

SPEAKER_04

That is awesome. So I just wanted to mention, because to my knowledge, you are not involved with any of the CWB Association chapters yet, but um, I just wanted to highlight because it is National Volunteer Month, um, how Eagle Alloys has supported the CWB Association, and that was that's voluntarily, no one twisted their arm, they just put themselves out there uh and they donated uh a battery-powered welder, right? That was for our national trivia last year. Yep, yeah. So I just wanted to say that right off the bat. And the other thing that I found pretty amazing about Eagle Alloys is uh big supporters of Rob Young's youth welding program out of small town Saskatchewan, you know?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hudson Bay. Um, you know, social media is a great thing. I uh I you know got got an account or two myself. And uh so Rob uh, you know, he used to be at the welding shop and in Melfort, and and so I'd heard about him kind of before he moved up to Hudson Bay and did the full-time art thing. And uh so I I became one of his follower followers, you know, reasonably early on. And uh then yeah, once he started this uh program, I uh on my next trip up through Hudson Bay, I stopped and talked to him and and I said uh he he'd mentioned there was a few companies from overseas that had donated some product, and I said, uh, I'm just gonna see what I can do for you, you know. So then I got on the horn with Jason and explained the whole thing, and he could hear my uh excitement and my passion coming out, and he says, Yeah, buddy, let's let's do something. So yeah, we we got him a case of rods, and you know, Rob threw it up on all his socials, and people were like, Oh, that's a great idea. And then all of a sudden, some other place and you know, Canada was donating something and it really got the ball rolling. And and so yeah, it's it's good. He's he's gonna have his tri a weld day. So uh yeah, so I I'm I'm gonna be up there. Uh, there's uh there's three people that are volunteering doing the the try weld park, and then I'm gonna have our latest battery welder, it's uh a wire feed version. I'm gonna have that up there and I'll do some demos for for people to check out while they're up there.

SPEAKER_04

So that is amazing. The kids are gonna go crazy. I know the first time that I saw a battery-powered welder, it uh it blew me away. And actually, I've been wanting to try yours, but you know, you know how life goes.

SPEAKER_03

Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, time time is there's never enough time.

SPEAKER_04

Need more hours in the day and more days in the week, right?

SPEAKER_03

Yes. A couple weeks ago, I was out at uh Moss Bank School. They're one of the school programs that uh brought trades programs back. They've uh got woodworking and and uh welding programs. So um I had actually run into the teacher at uh Ag in Motion last summer, and he said, Hey, is it something you'd be interested in coming to show your battery welder off to a class, uh a couple classes of high school students? And I said, sure. I mean, I know how much it meant to me to have access during high school, so to be able to give that to other kids, you know, if we had two classes, I think the the first class was uh nine and tens, and I think there was about 19 students, and then uh in the afternoon it was 11s and 12s, and I think there was about 10 students in that one. And so the first class, a lot of them had never ever experienced welding, you know. So that was their first opportunity was they got the try-out battery welder out and run some flux core and and burn some stick rods.

SPEAKER_04

So that is awesome. If if if no one ever puts tools in the kids' hands, how are you ever gonna find those ones that you know are gonna shine with those tools, right? So you're you're the person doing that, and and you volunteered to do so, right?

SPEAKER_03

Yep, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_04

That's amazing. I think it's really important for for companies like Eagle Alloys, like you know, all the major welding companies to get involved, you know, locally with the with the grassroots, I guess, the the boots in the ground. What do you what do you think about that?

SPEAKER_03

For sure. That's very important. I mean, at the end of the day, yeah, we're here to sell product, but if you don't have that next generation coming up to use that product, well, that that's it affects the whole industry, right? And and for me, having welded for so many years of my life, that it's a big part of who I am. You know, that's it's my hobby, like yourself, you know, there's lots of times. I come home after a day of work, whatever work I'm doing at the time, and I weld something in the garage, whether it be for fun for myself, for a race car, hot rod, or for another customer, and and you know, fix or or build something for somebody. Welding, it just uh it touches so many different things in the world, and uh, you know, it's it's needed. So yeah, you just and like you say, kids these days, they video games and hand-eye coordination, and you know, if you can give them a little task, and some of them you can tell it just lights something up in them, and at the you know, they flip that lid up and they're like, Wow, I just controlled sparks and fire, like that's the coolest thing ever, you know. And I know how that was for me, so it's it's nice to be able to give that to other people.

Skills Gap And Trade Advice

SPEAKER_04

That's very cool. Well, thank you for doing that. That's amazing. Now, with your sales position and going into many shops, uh, what what kind of challenges are you seeing out there? What kind of common things are happening kind of in in the industry that you can tell?

SPEAKER_03

There um there definitely is a shortage of of welders out there in in different areas. Um some of it is uh uh knowledge. Some you know, you you gotta you gotta train these people. Everybody wants to hire an employee that has five years experience. They don't want to be the place that gives them the five years experience.

SPEAKER_04

So that's pretty common, yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, that's that's tough, right? Um so that's the thing is to try and you know do more of these trade programs and that type of stuff to get them some some practical experience and and get them learning like what Rob's doing is fantastic. And with them building art and they're creating their own projects, and you know, they start learning how to operate a tape measure and use grinders and and shears cutting tools, like you just all of that different stuff to to get the reading a tape measure, something that you and I take for granted. It's not a given that people can just do that.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, so I guess what what we're kind of looking at is we're not just in a in a uh a uh personnel gap, but we're also in a skills gap where the people that are coming up don't quite have what we had.

SPEAKER_03

Right, right, 100%. And and that's part of, I guess, with me growing up on a farm. I had that opportunity at eight years old to burn a rod, you know, and I'm sure before that I was using the tape measure, acting like I knew how to read it and using the old woods hand saw and cutting pieces of wood and making a bird house, just those types of things, the hand on, learning how to to build stuff. Like my dad was a way better woodworker than he was with metal. And with me, I figured out pretty early on that I liked working with metal more than I liked wood. Because I mean, when I cut it too short, at least I could weld it back together and cut it again. You've you've probably experienced that classic timer.

SPEAKER_04

Classic, yeah. I cut it twice and it's still too short.

SPEAKER_03

Yep. Been there.

SPEAKER_04

So, Clay, as we wrap up here, do you have any piece of advice for anyone looking to get into the trades, no matter what age they are?

SPEAKER_03

That's a good point. It doesn't matter what age you are, right? You you can be older. And it if you're if you're 50 years old, maybe you're not gonna come and try it out and want to start your career at that. But I'll tell you, there are guys that have done that. I while I was at Ace, I met a guy, and I think he was 45 when he started welding. And at 50, we were building a new deck for him, and he was running his truck up in Fort McMurray, right? Like, yeah. So you're saying there's still time, there's still time, it's it's never too late, you know. Go, go, uh, go do your dream, whatever it is. Take take that chance, right? You never know what opportunity is gonna click, and and and don't be afraid to talk to people and be personable and meet people because look at my long trail of of everything here. It it all comes from, you know, I knew somebody here, and a lot your your reputation precedes you a lot of times, you don't even know when you got guys you've only ever talked to once. And and well, with my sales, I had a couple of different machine shops and opposite ends of the province. Talk to a guy in the middle of the province, and he says, Hey, you need to talk to this guy, and this is the rod you need to ask him about. And all of a sudden he's calling me and asking me about this, and I'm and then I'm talking, well, where'd you hear about me from? And he rattles off all these people, and I'm thinking, Well, yeah, the one place I've been to and sold some stuff, and the other place I've actually only ever talked to him on the phone once and sent him an email with some information, and I hadn't even been to his shop yet, right? But it's just getting getting the word out there. There's it's like we say, there's so much about welding. Uh, there's people people ask me questions, and not a week goes by that I have to stop him and go, Hold on, I have to get that answer for you because I don't know. I I haven't experienced that before, you know. So either I get to talk to other reps that have have dealt with that situation or that type of material, or you know, you get on the old internet and start doing some research and finding out, okay, well, this is you know, there's so many different materials in grades of stainless, like I've dealt with a lot of stainless before, and I had one a year and a half ago that it was like I've never heard of that kind of stainless.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

But we we got it figured out and and we got them some product in their hand in short order, and yeah, they were super pumped about it.

SPEAKER_04

That's cool. So, you know, be you be willing to learn, be willing to teach, be open-minded, and and be a genuine, like a genuinely good human. Be be nice to your your fellow welder, and you never know where it's gonna lead you.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, 100%, 100%. I hope that most of the days of the grumpy old guys sitting in the corner are are over. Hopefully, it's more cheery old guys sitting in the corner that are willing to you know help you out. But don't don't be a jerk to that person, you know, be nice to them so that they have no excuse but to be nice to you.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, very true. Well, Klate, thank you so very much for being on this episode. It was great to get to learn all of that and and hear about your welding journey. Um, to the listeners out there, we got episodes dropping weekly, unless something unforeseen happens. We're all human. But uh stay tuned and uh thanks very much for listening.

SPEAKER_01

You've been listening to the CWB Association Welding Podcast. If you enjoyed what you heard today, rate our podcast and visit us at CWBassociation.org to learn more. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions or suggestions on what you'd like to learn about in the future. Please subscribe and thank you for listening.