Horsepower and Utility Poles

It is widely reported that Henry Ford was asked if he had ever gone to the people to see what they wanted. His reply was that they would have asked for faster horses.

In the Northeast this year, during late summer and fall, hurricane flooding and a surprise early snowfall took down trees, utility poles and power lines. Many of us were left without power for long periods of time. The focus of anger and complaint fell on the local power companies for their failure to communicate status and get things fixed quickly enough. We all speculated on how we could better secure the poles, trim the trees, provide faster response, etc.

We approach the power problem in the early 21^st century in much the same way people approached the transportation problem in the late 19^th century.  We try to solve the problem in the terms and the ideas of the very thing that got us to the problem.

The world had to think beyond horse-powered transportation and the world has to think past the idea of transmitting power over lines hung from wooden poles along the side of tree-lined roads.  It wasn’t about better horses and it’s not about better utility poles.

I am regulary asked by people if Pentad does Temp or Perm and what industry we specialize in. As we start to move toward different ideas of workforce augmentation, we have to think beyond these two categories.

Frank Vucolo