YORKTON, Sask. — Think you could rebuild a transmission blindfolded? How about overhaul an engine in complete darkness? Eric Statchuk can. And he can’t see.

The 22-year-old truck technician in Yorkton, Sask., was born blind. He gets by with a finely tuned sense of hearing and touch — and by all accounts, he’s one heck of a technician, a top producer with almost no comebacks.

“He’s one of my best guys,” says Dave Fyck, a co-owner (with his brother Dean) of Truck Proz, a busy shop in the northeast end of town. “He can diagnose things better than most. If I could have two or three more guys like him, I’d be thrilled.”

Statchuk started wrenching three years ago, and has shown a remarkable aptitude for the job.

FEEL FOR THE JOB: Watching Statchuk
work, yoou can’t tell he’s blind.

“On his first day,” says boss Fyck, “a truck came in with a ‘clunk’ and we told Eric to pull the diff plugs and check for pieces. He said there were no pieces there, so I was about to call the customer, but before I did, Eric called out, ‘I found the problem! It’s a U-joint.’ Well, the rest is history.”

Amazingly, his brother Shane was also born blind and also works as a truck technician, but he’s at the provincial department of highways across town.

The brothers first showed their fascination with mechanics on the farms they visited as kids. In their early teens, they worked on half-tons and old cars. When it came time to make career decisions, they enrolled in a ‘tri-trades program’ where they learned the basics of agriculture, truck-and-bus, and heavy-duty maintenance work.

“I’m up for anything,” says Statchuk. “It could be a clutch re-and-re, it could be a simple oil change and grease… shackle pins, anything. One day I’ll be replacing the brakes on a truck, the next I’ll start a complete engine overhaul.”

“Every day’s different,” he says.

Watching him work, it’s hard to believe that Statchuk is blind to everything but the greatest contrast between light and dark. He’s completely confident both under the hood and under the trailer, and some people don’t even know he’s blind until they’re told.

He has his limitations, of course.

Eric’s brother Shane, also blind, repairs
heavy machinery for the Dept. of Highways.

“I don’t do a lot of electronics,” Statchuk says “If it’s a simple wiring job or changing a plug with six wires, I’ll do that. Or wiring up a light, that’s pretty easy. I might have to ask someone the colors of the wires, and then I bend them in a different way so I know which is which. But I’m not the wiring guy in the shop.”

Fyck says Statchuk is being modest. “He manages electrical work by holding his test light right against his eye to see if it lights up. Or he’ll feel if the bulb’s hot. He’ll work through it.”

Fyck calls his wrench wielder “fearless.”

“He just rebuilt an old transmission, there are only about five of these particular transmissions in Canada and we couldn’t get parts for it, so he completely rebuilt it himself,” says Fyck. “Stripped it all down, cleaned it up, put new gears in it. I wouldn’t even have tackled a job like that.”

Are customers worried having a blind man service their trucks? “Some of them, sure. The ones who know me, no,” he says.

“At the beginning, if a customer looked at Dave funny about me working on their truck, Dave would tell him, ‘Eric’s working on it, and if you don’t like it, you can take your truck somewhere else.'”

The work isn’t without its dangers, but both brothers say that’s just part of the challenge. “I’ve hit my heads on lots of things, but not enough for stitches or anything,” says Eric.

“Yeah, he’s stepped in the odd oil bucket, or grease bucket. Or banged his head on a mirror,” agrees his brother.

“We all do that, though. Especially those trucks with the mirror on the hood; you open the hood and walk around, forgetting about the mirror and crack your melon on it. He’s no different from the rest of us that way. We just try to keep things a little neater for him.”