Considering oilfield work, need advice on types of jobs

Well, depends on what you mean by breathing by your neck. There are plenty of trucking jobs on the patch where you are in your truck solo but you will still have to deal with dispatch several times a day, company men, rig hands, etc. What, specifically, are you wanting to get into? Water? Sand? Crude? Piping? There is a little bit of everything out here.

 

I would like to know also, I live in La. what company out there is willing to hire you on with no exp. haul oil field equip. and is a haz mat a must?

 

Not a must, but it is preferred. Lots of companies will hire you out here if you have a cdl and a decent MVR. The big ones like PowerFuels, MBI, Cascade, etc are pretty much always hiring. There are plenty of guys at my yard who were hired directly out of cdl school.

 

Hows the housing these days? I kept reading how difficult it was to find
a place to live,or affordable.

 

water hauling is about 1/3 driving 2/3 waiting to be loaded to unloaded. with 5 to 10 minutes per load to check tank level, connect hoses and stuff.

 

Look for companies that have housing there are a few. Nuverra and Mann trucking,are a couple.

 

You're always going to have someone breathing down your neck in this business. Reason being that in a lot of oilfield jobs, you screw up and lots of people get put out of work, get hurt, or cause an insanely expensive environmental cleanup. I've seen entire companies thrown off a well site or outright fired, for a simple dumb mistake, such as pulling away from a manifold before detaching your unloading hose.

This isn't OTR. There are dozens of people working with some seriously dangerous equipment, in difficult terrain and conditions. Get used to over site, there is (and should be) always someone watching.

 

You don't need to make friends. You just need to be polite and professional and competent and things will go fairly smooth. You probably want to ask prospective employers about the living situation. Some will house you by yourself, some with a bunch of people, anything from your own room to a shared room in a man camp. Or some will have you living in your sleeper.