 Hey everyone, my name is Logan, and I'm a traffic manager in the United States Air Force. I joined the Air Force really for three reasons. The first one was I had a step-brother in the military. He was in the Air Force and he was a an aircraft maintainer. He worked specifically on F-16s. So one, that's like my favorite airframe. And two, he was in Japan for the majority of his 10 year. So getting to hear his stories and everything that he had to say about the Air Force and about what he was doing in Japan for a 14 year old kid, that was like really awesome to me. So I wanted to be a part of that. The second reason, going back a little bit, there was a marine from my hometown, Sergeant Daniel Patron. He graduated from my high school way back when and, you know, his family was well known throughout the community. I looked it up today, it was like in 2011, he was killed in action. He was explosive, ordinance disposal. So you can go look him up. I highly encourage it. He's an American hero. Day when, you know, his funeral was coming through the town. They had the casket with the American flag. They had the motorcycles, the Marine Corps flags, the Air Force flags, you know, everything. I was at a gas station and I remember like seeing the sirens, seeing the motorcycles and watching it. And there was something about that that just really got to me and let me know that I need to be doing a little bit more for my country someday. And that was a big reason why I joined. And finally, you know, I thought if I was going to join, the best job in the world for me would be a fighter pilot. I think that there's no, no better or cooler job than that. I want to be Tom Cruise someday, you know. Whereas I know I'm speaking to an audience that's more than likely going to enlist and this whole interview was going to be more about my enlistment and my job as an enlisted airman, but I someday I want to be an Air Force officer. And so why I enlisted, why I joined was for not only the two reasons I mentioned earlier, but to also chase a path to get to the officer side. I've been in just over three years, hit my three year mark a couple months ago. I'm currently a senior airman without the pay grade is E4. So I actually just tested for Staff Sergeant a couple months ago. So wish me the best of luck. I find out results in late August. Hopefully I'll be an E5 Staff Sergeant here soon. But currently, just over three years and senior airman. So my job is traffic management. It's also referred to as TMO or the Traffic Management Office. RAFSE is 2T0XRA1. No, this was not a job that I had in the depth. And as far as I know, everybody who I've met, they never had this job in the depth for whatever reason, the majority of us tend to go in open administrative or open general. And this is what we end up getting. I found out probably like the sixth or seventh week of basic training, definitely near the tail end of things. And I honestly had no idea what it was. I think I had it as like very bottom of my list, but that's why I ended up getting and here I am today as a traffic manager. You know, as I just said, I didn't really have a plan to be a traffic manager. It was definitely nowhere on my radar, you know? I didn't even know anything about the career field until I got to tech school. Someone in basic, like at church on Sunday, they told me like, yeah man, you call people and you move stuff out of their houses. And I was like, what kind of job is that? You know, but got to tech school and found out that there's a whole lot more to it than just that. So I got to tech school and even more when I got into the Air Force and really started doing my job, I ended up really having a passion and a love for it. The one that was like at the top of my list was firefighter. Before I really wanted to be in the military. I really wanted to be a firefighter for some reason. And so I thought like, wow, like if I was in the military and be a firefighter, that's kind of like, you know, two birds in one stone type deal. But really that was the only one I really remember. I was thinking personnel to just because wanting to chase the whole officer thing. I knew I wanted time to go to school, time to chase the different avenues to get to be in an officer. So I knew I didn't want to spend a whole lot of time at work. I know how the bad that sounds, but I didn't really want to have my weekends and my free time taken away. And also I wanted a quick tech school. I think I think tech school was like just over a month. So didn't want to spend six months at Kiesler or in Texas. So, but yeah, so I mean, I just ended up going in open admin of all things and ended up getting this job, probably the sixth or seventh week of basic training. So me, I'm on a four year contract right now. So just being over three years in, technically my data separation is less than a year away. And I'm definitely going to reenlist or extend my contract the, you know, I guess what really attracts people doing the six year contract is getting E3 right off the bat. And for me, I got E3 off the bat either way, whether I did a four year or a six year contract, just because I had experience in junior ROTC. I know that you also get it off the bat if you were an Eagle Scout and the Boy Scouts. And if you reached, I want to say Lieutenant in the Civil Air Patrol, you get E3 right off the bat when enlisting. So I figured, you know, maybe if, if I joined and I absolutely hate it, I'm only doing a four year commitment and I'm still getting E3. So I'm on a four year contract. Tech School for Traffic Management is in Fort Lee in Virginia. It's in Petersburg, Virginia, I want to say, or at least somewhere extremely close to there. I want to say that's like a 30 minute drive from Richmond and probably an hour and a half, two hours away from Washington, D.C. So it's an all right area, but Fort Lee is the Tech School for Traffic Management. Tech School is about a month and a half. I want to say it's 55, 56 days in total, time that you spend in the classroom, depending on, you know, if you're being stationed, O'Connis, or if you're going to be moving family, or maybe some kids, you might have to stay a little extra longer just because they need to process your passwords and information before you can go overseas. Even maybe before then, you'll have to wait a couple of weeks to start school just because classes are always so filled, but the actual course itself is just over a month. I want to say like a month and a half and you might have a little extra time added onto that. So it's safe to bet that you'll spend probably about two months total at Fort Lee. For me personally, I didn't have the best experience at Fort Lee. I tried to take on a lot. I'll let once to try to become a student leader for whatever reason. I just got way too wrapped up in that, you know, and along with a lot of other factors, I was starting to neglect school a little bit. And so about halfway through the course, I ended up failing a test and I got washed back a couple of weeks. So my month and a half of school ended up turning into a little bit more than that. And I spent like a total about three months at Fort Lee. So I had, you know, a couple, couple really bad days and really long days. I do admit, I did have some fun days and I met some great people who I'm still friends with today. Fort Lee for me wasn't that great, but I know people who had literally the exact opposite. They like going outside of Fort Lee and seeing the historical battlefields and stuff of the Civil War guy I work with now. He actually met his wife at Fort Lee when she was going to the 2T2 Aerial Transportation School. So, I mean, it kind of just depends on what you make of it. You're going to hear that a lot throughout the Air Force career and probably your military career if you don't end up going into the Air Force, but it's what you make of it. Really, we can be stationed at just about anywhere Air Force bases or deployed locations. You can be on joint bases. Literally, we're kind of needed just about everywhere in the world. And I know I say that with like a little bit of cockiness, but it's true. I mean, we're such a big component to the logistics system of the military and Department of Defense. We are needed in some way, shape or form at every single installation, Bob or like Sandbox location. So really, we can go just about anywhere. In a nutshell, traffic management is FedEx for the military. That's the most basic way to put it. I don't know was like putting it that way, but essentially we are there to move whatever the DoD needs us to move. So while we're in the Air Force and we move Air Force property, whether that's cargo, our people or our people stuff, we also have a big hand in helping out our sister services, combat and commands, and really just about every other function of the Department of Defense, where or however you want to interpret that, we move just about everything. And, you know, we have capabilities to move it by multiple modes of transportation, whether that's by commercial air, military air, military sea lift, commercial sea lift, trucks out on the road, highway, you know, so we actually do a lot with logistics. So the best way to relate my job to something that maybe someone's a little bit more familiar with is the FedEx or Amazon for the military. Honestly, I don't work a lot compared to a lot of other AFSCs. You know, we do work on Monday through Friday, 07.30 to 4.30 in the afternoon. We have a pretty simple and easy schedule for the most part. Of course, if you're in deployed locations or if you're at certain bases, you might have to work a little bit more. 12 hours is typically the most you'll ever work in a day in the military regardless. Maybe some people are laughing right now, but that's typically our work week is Monday through Friday, 7.30 to 4.30. Every couple months or so you're going to be probably put on a standby schedule, meaning that all the issues that happen after duty hours, you're basically going to have to go into the shop and deal with it. So that could be anything really. And it could even take away some time on your weekends every once in a while. It doesn't happen a lot, but it is just something to keep in mind. The only type of certificate I can really think of is the hazmat stuff. You can go into the hazmat specialist course. And essentially what that is is that you learn how to certify hazard as cargo through all means of military transportation. There is certain labels and stuff like that you need to be able to mark on your cargo. So that's a valuable skill for us as folks in the military. And then I think all you have to do is take a test or some sort of online course, and then that kind of transfers into a civilian certificate that you can take with you to, you know, that job down the line when you go to work at FedEx or Amazon or UPS. It is very valuable. Really, that's the only type of certificate, certification, qualification I can think of. Really your experience just as a traffic manager alone, whether you're four years, six years, 10, 20, 30, your experience is going to be the biggest thing that transfers over into the civilian sector. Whether you know it or not, just saying that you wore a uniform and everything like that, that's going to move mountains for you in the civilian side. But your experience of dealing with everything that you're going to be dealing within the military, that's something that commercial businesses are looking for. So your experience is going to transfer over very well. And if you're hasn't that certified, that's probably going to move over very well too. Deployment tempos are actually pretty hot in TMO or traffic management. This goes back to kind of what I said earlier is that we're just kind of needed everywhere, a lot of which is deployed locations. For whatever reason, I know it sort of speeds up when you hit a staff sergeant and tech sergeant, just because there's not a whole lot of staffs and techs in the career field. So you might be going out every other year or every year or every six months or so. It is a kind of a fairly high deployment tempo. If you want to deploy, you'll definitely deploy. But it is just something to keep in mind, I guess. Of course, everyone's Air Force story is a little bit different. There are some people in TMO who haven't deployed half their career. And there are some people who deploy almost every year. It all just kind of depends. And a lot of it deals with if you want to or not. I definitely want to make the Air Force a career. I absolutely love the Air Force. This is all I've wanted to do since I was 14, 15 years old. I do want to continue my career though on the officer side. Like I said, it's my absolute dream to be a pilot. So I want to definitely get there someday and then maybe go work in the Pentagon or something. I think that'd be pretty cool. Be a commander. So I definitely want to make a career out of the military, more specifically out of the Air Force. But I don't think I'll be making the career out of TMO. If I was staying enlisted, I probably would. But that's just not me. So yeah, if I was staying enlisted, I would probably remain TMO. I love working in a logistics readiness squadron. I love seeing the value in what I do. It is a job where you do get to see the fruits of your labor in a sense. And I really enjoy it. But for me, that's just not where I want to go. Hypothetically, if I didn't want to stay in TMO and I would stay enlisted and find another job, I would definitely consider Aerial Gunner or Special Missions Aviation. It's something along those lines. Yeah, something along the lines of that. That looks pretty cool. My biggest advice to you, if you're watching this right now, or maybe if you're watching in the future, find out what kind of impacts you make as an airman and as a traffic manager. Everybody in the Air Force, whether you're maintenance or services or TMO or whatever the case may be, putting airplanes in the sky and that is generating combat sorties. And somewhere, somewhere down that line, a pilot is going to put a bomb on target. And that's going to be because of you. You are the reason why planes are flying. You're the reason why lives are being saved. And you're the reason why, you know, America is remaining free and strong. Some people think that's corny, but it's absolutely 100% true. It's very easy to lose sight of that for whatever reason. Some days, you know, you'll just be packing boxes or just kind of waiting around for a customer to show up. And it's very easy to lose sight of, you know, I'm in the military and I'm making an impact. So always strive to find those impacts and see the value in what you do because everything that you do, it literally moves mountains. It's as a traffic manager, you're going to move the world. A lot of our nations and our Air Force and our DOD partners, the success of their mission is going to depend on you. Don't take that lightly and always strive to see that impact. All right, everyone. Well, that's been my interview. I really hope you enjoyed it and I really hope you found it informative. And I hope to someday see you here in the Air Force, whether that's as a traffic manager or not. Fact of the matter is that we need young bright folks like you. And you know, I really hope to see you. I'm going to send Kyle my Instagram name so he can put it in the video. You can follow me on Instagram. Shoot me a message if you ever have any questions, concerns, any things you want to bring to my attention. I'd be more than willing to help you and hopefully find your place in the Air Force. So thanks for watching, guys. Give this video a thumbs up, support Kyle and his channel. To Kyle, it's been a huge honor working with you. So thank you for that and have a good day.