Mechanic at the U.S. Postal Service
Donald May’s love for cars has always influenced his career decisions. His surprise came when he found out how many other skills he had picked up in the Marine Corps.
by Warren Duffie

Engines have always driven Donald May. Growing up in tiny Anthony, Texas, a town of around 3,000 people located near El Paso, there wasn’t much else to do but tinker with hot rods.

The young May spent his high school years cruising, talking sparkplugs and alternators with friends and toiling in the garage on his 1965 GTO and 1969 Ford Cougar. “Cars are in my blood,” May, 40, says. “It’s definitely a passion for me.”

So it only makes sense that the former Marine Corps master sergeant made fixing vehicles his military and civilian callings. Today, May is a mechanic at the U.S. Postal Service’s central vehicle maintenance facility in Houston, one of five located in the area. May is one of 30 mechanics who service some 1,300 postal service vehicles, ranging from the small delivery trucks seen in residential areas to one-ton commercial trucks that haul mail through several states. He works from 12:30 p.m. until 9 p.m., spending his days changing oil, replacing brakes and giving tune-ups. No job is routine. Though most of the vehicles he checks are driven to the facility, he sometimes answers emergency calls by trucks that have broken down on a route.

“There’s always a different challenge each day,” May says. “That’s what makes my job so enjoyable.”

Mays joined the armed forces in 1981, a small-town kid who wanted to see what the world outside of Anthony, Texas, had to offer. He finished basic training at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego, Calif. Afterwards, he went to Camp Lejeune, N.C., for training as a motor transport specialist, where he learned to repair transport trucks, tanks and jeeps.

During his career, May served at bases in San Diego, Hawaii and Okinawa, Japan, ending his career at a Marine Corps reservist-training center in Houston, where he helped provide transportation and logistical support to the troops there. Though he enjoyed the military, he decided in 2002 that two decades was long enough to serve and that he should prepare for a civilian future.

“I still had all my fingers and toes, and all my limbs worked,” May joked. “In the Marine Corps, that’s kind of rare.”

So May attended various transition assistance classes, polished his resume-writing and interviewing skills and scoured Internet job sites, sending his resume to companies that needed mechanics. He also took a test for the postal service prior to his retirement. The former Marine actually found his first job with the Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County, Texas, which serves the Houston area. May worked as a yard supervisor, scheduling buses on their routes, ensuring that they left the vehicle yard on time and checking for maintenance problems when the buses came back after a run.

After four months at “Metro,” May was contacted by the postal service, invited to take some more exams and offered a job.

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Quick Stats
Company: U.S. Postal Service
HQ City: Washington, DC
2004 Revenue: $69 billion
# of Employees: 700,000
Post Offices: 38,000
Delivery Customers: 142 million
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Looking back on his military career, he says that the main skills that still help him today are leadership and the ability to work well with others.

“I also learned that I had more skills than I thought I did,” May says. “When I was preparing to retire I didn’t think I’d have any marketable skills aside from being a mechanic. But I realized that in the Marine Corps, I worked in safety and dealing with hazardous materials, and was a maintenance chief, running my own automotive shop. That’s how it is for a lot of military people - we can do a lot of things.”

But the former master sergeant warns those leaving the military about a major blunder that could hamper a successful transition: using military lingo with civilian employers. After all, the private sector is a different world, and terms like “MOS” are often a foreign language to companies.

“You have to tone down the jargon and translate your military skills into civilian ones,” May says. “If you can do that, you’ll be successful. One thing that civilian employers like about military people is that if they see a truck with a flat tire, they just go ahead and change it; in the civilian world, people often would wait to be told to change the tire. Employers love that ‘can-do’ attitude and self-motivation.”