Every workday, John Kuzma wakes up about 5 a.m., then hustles out the door of his Greenfield home an hour later, slips behind the wheel of his car and settles in for at least a 90-minute commute to his federal government job in Chicago.

Michael Coughlin's schedule is similar, though he heads in the opposite direction from his south side Milwaukee home for Appleton, hoping that traffic will be light so the trip will take him only two hours and he can start his workday at an adhesives company at 8 a.m.

Kuzma, an enforcement agent with the Federal Communications Commission, has been making the drive to Chicago and back for about two years. Coughlin's been commuting to Appleton for six years.

They are what the U.S. Census Bureau counts as "extreme commuters," people who drive 90 minutes or more each way for work.

Their ranks are growing, too, according to a recent Census Bureau report. The number of extreme commuters in Wisconsin has risen 29% -- to 37,661 in 2005 from 29,226 in 2002. Wisconsin commuters in that category grew at a faster clip than the rest of the nation. Across the U.S., the number of extreme commuters rose to slightly more than 3 million, up 19.8% from 2002.

Kuzma and Coughlin say they would rather not be driving so much, but they have to go where the jobs are.

"For the last six years, people think I'm nuts," Coughlin said.

"In Milwaukee, that's considered to be borderline mentally ill," he said of his four-hour roundtrips. "But in Chicago, on the East Coast and West Coast, it's not that unusual."

"I talk to salespeople in California, and they don't consider this to be abnormal. In Wisconsin, though, everybody is looking to work 15 minutes from their home," Coughlin said.

Coughlin took his job because it has locations in the Milwaukee area as well as Appleton. He had been hoping for a local position, but the company asked him to work at its Fox Valley site.

"I'm a chemist," he explained. "It's not a job where you can go just anywhere. Unless you want to relocate, you really have to go where the work is."

The company has sites in New Berlin and Germantown, and "hopefully I'll be in Germantown soon," Coughlin said.

For Kuzma, a job loss in 2001 put him on the route to the long commute. He had been working for Wisconsin Bell/Ameritech and Motorola in the Milwaukee area. However, after becoming unemployed, he wasn't able to find work in the region.

"There's just not a lot out of there in electrical engineering, especially in Milwaukee," Kuzma said.

"So I temporarily moved to (Washington) D.C. three years ago to take a job with the FCC. My plan was to get any federal job and work in D.C. until I could transfer to a federal agency job somewhere near Milwaukee. I was able to transfer to the FCC's Chicago field office two years ago," he said.

That means, though, commutes of roughly 90 minutes in the morning and 90 to 120 minutes in the evening for the ride home. Kuzma puts about 30,000 miles a year on his vehicle, and tolls and gasoline cost him a little more than $100 a week.

"Yeah, it's a burden," he said. "But some attorneys who live on the east side and in Mequon work in Chicago and take the train at $40 a day."

Even though the number of extreme commuters in Wisconsin is rising -- in part because people are moving to suburban areas that offer more green space and living farther from their workplaces -- the state still has relatively few of these commuters.

In Wisconsin, extreme commuters make up only about 1.4% of those who work outside their homes. In the United States, 2.4% of the workers are extreme commuters. New York was the highest at 4.8% followed by New Jersey at 4.4%.

Ken Yunker, deputy director of the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission, said some of the extreme commuters live here in the region and commute to Cook County, Ill., where Chicago is located, because the housing prices are lower in the Milwaukee area.

Others, Yunker said, are people whose spouses transferred to jobs here but could not find employment in the area. So, they end up commuting to jobs in Chicago or elsewhere in northern Illinois.

The census report also showed that average travel times to work in Wisconsin and the Milwaukee metro area have remained steady, even though more people are making extreme commutes.

On average, Wisconsinites are spending nearly 21 minutes commuting to work, according to the report. New York state residents have the longest commute, at 31.2 minutes, while the U.S. average is 25.1 minutes.

The longest commute time of the 23 Wisconsin counties included in the Census Bureau's American Community Survey was reported in St. Croix County, near Minneapolis-St. Paul. Commuters in St. Croix, the state's fastest growing county, are spending 27.8 minutes to get to work, many of them driving to the Twin Cities.

Few commuters, the report shows, are using public transit. About 84% of commuters in the state drive alone to work. Only 1.6% of Wisconsin commuters use public transportation. Milwaukee and Dane counties had the highest use of public transit at 5.1% and 3.9% respectively.

Relocating not an option

Both Kuzma and Coughlin, two of Milwaukee County's extreme commuters, said relocating to cut drive times isn't an option for them.

"I've thought of Racine or Pleasant Prairie," Kuzma said. "But then my wife would have a long ride."

Kuzma's wife, Mary Jo, is an accountant at Marquette University.

"And I like where I live," he added.

Coughlin said moving is out of the picture for him, too. His wife, Susan, works at Alverno College.

"She can walk to work. I also take care of my father, who's 83," Coughlin said, noting that neither his wife nor his father, Pat, wanted to move.

Coughlin said he has adjusted to the drive, which costs him about $25 daily in gas, and passes the time listening to the radio.

"You really have to develop a mental attitude, especially going up when it's raining and snowing. . . . I slow down and let people pass and wave to them in the ditch."

Kuzma, as well, is comfortable with the ride.

"Really, the trip is all highway," he said. "It goes pretty fast."