Electric utility switching stations and substations in the U.S. typically have hundreds of disconnect switches in outdoor yards that are manually closed and opened. For safety reasons, these switches are usually located at least 10 ft above the ground and require specialized methods to open and close the switch. The most common manual method to open or close a disconnect switch is through the use of an insulated pole that ranges from 6 to 20 ft long. Due to the shear number of required independent tasks (workers may have to open or close 100 disconnect within 30 min), the manual opening and closing of disconnect switches is physically demanding and presents risk of musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs), particularly to the upper extremities. The purpose of this study was to model the hand push force exerted by the worker on the insulated pole to close a disconnect switch. A force gauge was attached to the end of the insulated stick while a worker closed a switch. An average of 510 lbs of peak reaction force was measured when the switch was closed. Digital video revealed the average time interval for the worker to push the stick was 210 ms, from the time the motion was started to the time the switch was completely closed. Modeling in Siemens NX6.0 with ADAMS showed that a constant input force of 24 lbs on the stick was required by the worker to generate a peak reaction force of 510 lbs. Because most of the peak reaction force is transmitted to the upper extremities of the worker, these tasks expose the workers to MSDs. This type of dynamic analysis can be applied to many tasks that require a worker to use motion to exert a high peak reaction force. Furthermore, this method can enable researchers to assess the forces applied by a worker throughout the duration of a task, rather than just at the endpoint, which may provide more insight into which part(s) of a task present the greater risk of MSDs.