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Still Building America: Trenton’s story—24 years old and a lead fabricator

The dairy plant where Trenton Bennett serves as lead fabricator.

Trenton Bennett is a 24-year-old fabricator who has already been welding for 14 years. As a 10-year-old kid, he found his dad’s Lincoln buzz box and a bunch of 7018 rod and started laying beads on metal, attaching pipe to plate. “I would weld them on and grind them off just for something to do. At 15 I was MIG welding gussets in my 4-wheeler frames to make them stronger. Over time I began fixing things for friends, such as the exhausts on their cars,” said Trenton.

His hobby as a youth became his profession as an adult. At 18 Trenton started on as a maintenance tech at an injection molding facility. There he developed skills as a machinist, as well as welding, as he helped maintain the tooling and equipment around the plant. Almost five years into that job, he decided to pursue a path that was less maintenance and more welding (which is something I can relate to, as I made a similar decision when I left Chrysler, where I was a millwright/maintenance welder, and moved on to General Dynamics Land Systems to fabricate in its prototype shop).

Experienced in GMAW and SMAW, but not yet with GTAW Trenton made the jump to full- time fabricator over a year ago and hasn’t looked back. He’s now at a higher-paying job working in the research and development department at a large dairy plant in Ohio.

With GTAW being a large part of the sanitary welding industry, he focused on tackling this new skill. Hard work and dedication paid off—he’s currently the plant’s lead fabricator. His duties include a heavy dose of GTAW of stainless steel, and even orbital welding. Occasionally his background in other processes comes in handy as well, depending on the task at hand.

“Welding is like a comfort zone to me,” Trenton said. “It calms my mind and is something that I love to do, although at times it is very difficult and stressful. Knowing that all your passion goes into every weld makes me strive to learn and practice to perform the best welds I can produce. It's like an art to me.

“A lot of guys I have worked around seem to just do it for a paycheck—careless and not dedicated. To me welding isn't something you do just for a paycheck. Blood, sweat, and tears go into it. You have to have ‘the want’ to gain knowledge to succeed in welding as your career.”

Despite his experience, being a relatively young worker, Trenton strives to better his skill set not just to put him and his employer in a better spot, but also to feed his passion. And, like me, he believes his generation is bringing it:

“I don’t think the youth of welding is lazy, because welding schools are always full. Each generation is different and believes in different ways of doing things. What works for you might not work for somebody else.

“Often I see older people cutting on the young guys who are trying to learn—like they never laid a bad weld in their lives. Everyone starts somewhere, and the guys that make it their career and are able to hold a full-time job welding are the dedicated ones. These days people are intimidated way too easily and give up.”

So, there you have it. Follow your passion and do not be dissuaded. I can dig it.

All photos courtesy of Trenton Bennett.

About the Author
Brown Dog Welding

Josh Welton

Owner, Brown Dog Welding

(586) 258-8255