As a 16-year-old in Salt Lake City, Cody Clegg was already 6’2” and using that bulk to wrestle and play defensive lineman for his high school. When not doing that, he worked for a shop doing alignment and brake jobs on heavy-duty trucks and trailers. The 28-year-old hasn’t really stopped since. He’s had stints at Republic Services fixing refuse trucks and then supervising 12 technicians at two locations and as a municipality maintenance manager.
There’s likely no place he’s worked harder—or been more of a team player— than at his current role as lead technician for Marathon Petroleum Corp. He clocks 60 or more hours a week maintaining 66 Mack trucks that haul crude oil from wells in the Northwest and Canada to a refinery in Salt Lake City. Though he signed up as a shop mechanic in 2021, the rugged expanse of northern Utah is his workplace. Armed with just what will fit in his service truck, Clegg can rebuild a transmission, replace fuel injectors or wheel seals, or just do regular PMs.
And you’ll never hear him complain, back away from a challenge, or ignore a call to help other technicians or drivers, explained Nick Specht, a transport maintenance supervisor at Marathon.
“Cody has been working in an environment he did not sign up for as a field technician battling all of the elements that Utah has to offer,” Specht said. This included setting up PM schedules, ordering and inventorying parts, and being on call 24/7.
“Cody was basically doing the job of two techs,” Specht acknowledged.
Using a notebook, data from Mack’s GuardDog Connect telematics platform, and regular oil samplings, Clegg stays ahead of catastrophic engine failures, EGR cooler issues, and minor issues. The lead tech schedules his workload three weeks in advance and tries to touch trucks on a regimented two-week interval.
He has help now in the form of a junior technician who only had PM experience when he started. That experience is growing by the day, as Clegg “goes that extra step to make sure [other techs] understand the diagnosis procedure for future repairs and things to look for to help streamline the process,” Specht said.
By seeing his troubleshooting process, “they might advance a little bit more in their career,” Clegg said. The team is certainly stronger overall because of these efforts.
“This has helped our team develop a very diverse set of skills for handling all kinds of tough tasks that we would normally send to a dealership,” Specht said. “Now we can keep this work in-house.”
When he has so many responsibilities himself and is doing a job far more extreme than expected, why would Clegg continue to take one for the team?
“I can remember when I started as a technician,” Clegg started. “I didn’t really know a lot. I had a leader that wasn’t really the best and led by intimidation and belittling when you would make mistakes.
“That pushed me to be a really good technician,” he continued, “but I promised myself that when I ever got to the point where I could teach somebody, I would give them the respect and the attention that they deserve.”
Like most successful techs, he’s also driven to figure out and fix problems no one else can. But more than that, Clegg’s fighting for his favorite team: his wife and four children. “I like going home tired and dirty, knowing that I’m going to put food on the table for my family and my family’s going to be okay doing whatever they want to do,” he said. Clegg does make the most of his downtime, stalking elk and deer with his trusty bow when he’s not duck hunting or fly fishing. If that’s not enough, he also raises horses.
