Horses help expand cellphone network

MILWAUKEE Sometimes, our digital world needs horsepower. Literally.

Outfitting cellphone towers in rural Wisconsin, U. S. Cellular has turned to draft horses for hauling equipment up steep wooded hillsides, places where trucks have gotten stuck in the mud and all- terrain vehicles haven’t been up to the job, either.

The equipment, needed to upgrade mobile phone service in sparsely populated areas, weighs nearly a ton when all the pieces are included. But the big Brabant draft horses haul it through the rugged terrain with ease.

“When wheels fail, hooves always work,” said Al Brown, operations manager for CH Coakley Logistics, which hired the horses for U. S. Cellular.

The horses pull a wooden wagon, loaded with high- tech gear, like they would have hauled farm goods a century ago

Most days, the big draft horses, owned by Jason Julian of Medford, Wis., are used for logging, dragging timber out of the woods where a truck or tractor would make a mess of things.

Julian is a dairy farmer and logger. He uses eight Brabants, born and raised on his 225- acre organic farm, to plow fields and harvest crops.

He calls them his “2,000pound babies.”

“When you say ‘ over the hills and through the woods,’ that’s what we are talking about,” said Brandi Vandenberg, a U. S. Cellular regional planning manager for Wisconsin.

Draft horses can haul equipment through deep snow, and they can work in environmentally sensitive areas where a truck or ATV would damage the ground.

“With freezing and thawing, it’s been a challenging combination. We have had fourwheel- drive trucks get stuck that had to be pulled out … and that’s where it was a good idea to use the horses,” Vandenberg said.

“It’s pretty neat to be delivering today’s technology with a method that’s been around forever,” she said.

With thick hair that keeps them warm, they do well in the winter. It’s the drivers who get cold, said Mary Jane Swedberg, president of the Jefferson County Draft Horse Association.

The Brabant, which is what Julian works with, is also known as the Belgian Heavy Horse. It is legendary for its strength and mild temperament.

“They do hard things in a slow, quiet way. They’re gentle giants,” Swedberg said.

TYLER RICKENBACH, MARSHFIELD ( WIS.) NEWS- HERALD Jason Julian, a subcontractor for U. S. Cellular, uses a team of horses to transport supplies to a U. S. Cellular phone tower through muddy, uneven terrain in Portage County, Wis.