Hailey Brohamer poses in front of her classmates and instructors in the diesel lab at SLCC's Westpointe Campus.
When Hailey Brohamer was in the eighth grade, she thought she wanted to be an actor. Then she decided to shadow her father one day at his job as a diesel mechanic working for Wheeler Machinery Co. in Salt Lake City. It would not be an easy day, just hanging out with Dad.
Brohamer was up at 4 a.m. to leave by 5 a.m. Dad bought her a new pair of steel-toe boots, which she still has. She was given a tour of Wheeler and met lots of people. She was given a Cat (Caterpillar) hoodie, which she still wears. A fearless girl spent the day using a ratchet to pull apart sections of an engine used in heavy equipment, just like Dad would do.
“It was, I mean, it was hard work,” recalls Brohamer, now 16. “I enjoyed it. I am a hands-on type of person. I don’t care if I get my hands dirty. I actually like it.”
Time flew that day. “I was in the moment,” she says. “I loved doing it. I told my dad on the car ride home – I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh. This is what I want to do.’ I loved it.”
She showed Mom all of the new “stuff” they gave her at Wheeler. “I was like, ‘Mom, this is what I want to do. I know I want to do this.”
The ambition that caught fire that day has not faded, and now Brohamer, a junior at Copper Hills High School, is also enrolled at Salt Lake Community College in the diesel tech program, plowing toward an associate degree. He dream job is to someday work with her father at Wheeler and be “as good as him.”
Ganeva Rock Products was so impressed recently with Brohamer’s application for a scholarship that they awarded her one, which only happens twice a year. She was able to apply the $2,000 prize toward her spring 2020 semester at SLCC. She has since received another scholarship from Thermo King Intermountain, Inc. The extra money supplements her income from flipping burgers at a fast-food restaurant near her home in West Jordan.
Yeah, she’s a hard worker. Just as Grandpa, who happens to be Mark Kranendonk, diesel systems technology professor at SLCC, where he’s worked for 26 years. Over a 10-week timeframe in his class last fall, she took apart and reassembled a 14-liter, 425 horsepower, 3,000-pound truck engine – and it worked. “She was jumping around, bouncing off the walls, grinning ear to ear,” Kranendonk says. “She has a video, and she shows everybody.” The two laugh as they recall Hailey splitting open her hand while working without stopping. “Bring it on,” she says after Grandpa practically guarantees there will be blood on an upcoming classroom project.
Mark Kranendonk and Hailey Brohamer work on a crankshaft.
Kranendonk picked up the mechanic bug from his father. Hailey is the fourth-generation diesel mechanic and the only one of her siblings to follow in that path. These days, her older brothers brag about sis. Among her peers at school, she’s “that girl that got the scholarship.” Her own mother acknowledges that by the time she graduates from high school she’ll probably be earning more money than her. Grandpa sees no less than titles like shop foreman(woman) or service manager in her future.
In the near future, Brohamer is content changing all the fluids on her own 2005 Mitsubishi Lancer. Friends ask if she can work on their cars. And she’s thinking about senior pictures. “Everyone has their sports,” she says. “I want to do mechanic pictures, go to Dad’s work.”
Her advice for any other females young and older considering a similar path, one dominated by men? “It is scary, I’ll be the first to admit that,” she says. “I would say, just push past your fears. It’s really the drive and determination that will pull you through. I don’t have those fears anymore.”
