Kyja Flisrand helps to move snow from a huge pile at the Moody County Sheriff’s Office last week ahead of another round of snow predicted to come in. The 24-year-old is the only female heavy equipment operator on the team. The profession is one that more women are starting to enter, Flisrand said she was the only woman in her graduating class. This particular day, she was in the payloader.
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Chances are, you’ve maybe seen but never met Kyja Flisrand.
She’s pretty quiet, she says, and keeps largely to herself.
“I play video games. I play a lot of video games. That’s it. You can ask any of the guys around here. I don’t leave my house very often for anything that’s not work,” Flisrand said.
It’s her job however, that has her out and about throughout the county and maybe turning a head or two. In fact, that’s how the Moody County Enterprise learned about the 24-year-old.
Typically the job she has as a heavy equipment operator for the county, for any county or company for that matter, is done by a man. A November 2017 report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that among operating engineers and other construction equipment operators, only 2.3 percent were women. A more recent number from Zippia in 2022 shows that perhaps the number has risen closer to 8.6 percent.
“I know a few female truck drivers but I haven’t met any that specifically do heavy equipment,” she said. “When I was in high school, I saw these simulators and I thought it looked fun. I didn’t have anything else that I wanted to do too bad. I was the only girl in my major at school.”
Three years into a job with the Moody County Highway Department, the often funky-colored, long-haired, petite young woman is more than holding her own, and she loves the job. During the summer, she runs the trucks, hauls gravel and peat rock. Throughout the winter, you’ll most likely see her behind the wheel of the blade clearing snow drifts from the county’s gravel roads.
Her best advice to you, by the way, if you happen to be out driving and get behind her while she’s working to clear snow, “I take up a lot of room on the gravel roads. If you’re behind me, be patient. If you want to pass, I’ll pull over eventually because once I’m in a snow drift, if I lose my momentum, I’ve got to back up and get my momentum back so I don’t tend to stop.”
“Otherwise you’re out there at your own risk. When I’m going through drifts, if they are hard, my blade will turn out into the middle of the road if I hit it hard enough. If someone is trying to pass while I’m doing that, it could be bad. I just watched a lady the other day try to pass around me and fall off into the ditch and get stuck. No one at the county can help you if you get stuck.”
The self-proclaimed Navy brat has lived all over the country throughout her young life, but her family returned to her father’s home state of South Dakota when she was in her teens. She purchased a home herself in Flandreau a few years ago. She says she’s now able to call Moody County her home longer than anywhere else she’s ever lived.
