Jobs in ND Oil Patch

You must realize that there are 100's of owner ops sitting. The companies that own the work are busy. Very busy. Trucks from all over the country showed. There are bound to be 100's sitting. If you come on a hunch that you might get work you are going to be disappointed. Oil companies are tough to work for. You can't just roll into town and go to work. Some mom and pop trucking companies companies are leasing on trucks left and right with the promise of work when in reality they have no real work. A promise in a bar might last a week or a month but big boys will always control the work.

 

Power Fuels is one of the big boys. They will be busy for many many more years. They are gearing up as most of the other larger companies are. Those trucks sitting all over western ND are generally owner ops that come here with a hope and a prayer. PF/MBI/Plains/Black Hills/Falco/IE Miller/Enermax/Red River/ASK/ don't have trucks sitting. They are busy.


I am worried about SWIFT coming in. They are here with SLB now but their drivers are driving SLB trucks. I've heard SWIFT in coming in to haul crude and water with their own "Oilfield Fleet". Your observation proves this point. Here they come.... Watch out crude haulers, here come the rate cuts.

 

Something else to remember at the moment is that the frac companies are still complaining about being slow. If the company is slow, the drivers they're hiring are going to be slow, too...

 

My last comment about swift should have said Schneider. Schneider is hooked up with SLB. Swift is looking at crude and water hauling. Just wanted to clear that up.

 

You pay less, you get less.
I'd rather they all not come, but they're going to so may as well look at the bright side. They have nowhere to live, so they'll all be living in their trucks. When their drivers get sick of making 30 cents a barrel to sit in line for hours at a disposal and living in a truck in the middle of nowhere, they'll start doing crap like dumping on roads/in ditches so they can make some cash. That will put a huge hit on the company's pockets because they WILL get caught. Then when their steering wheel holders start putting water in fuel tanks and salt water in day tanks because they don't know a thing about the oilfield, the company will find out just how expensive rig day rates are while they fix their screw ups. Then the winter will come. I'm thinking I should buy a couple winch trucks so I can make an early retirement from pullin em outta jams.

 

No doubt about it. But like everything else the oil companies that use them will have to learn a lesson about thinking cheaper is better. Pay a premium you usually get a premium product or service. They'll learn someday...

 

Something else to remember is that "busy" is also going to be dependent upon what they're hauling, not just who the company is. Crude and water haulers, for example, are almost constantly in motion.
Sand, on the other hand, is sporadic because of the nature of fracking...

 

Tweaked that for you.

 

Every spring the work slows and 90% of the drivers out here, because it's the first year for 90% of them, start saying the boom went bust, the O/O's cutthroat us (or the big companies if you're an O/O), such and such county reduced all it's roads to 1 ton, the sky is falling, the Mayans were right, blah blah blah. Just relax and enjoy it. Once it dries up, all the restrictions are off (most of them are off already), and the fracs are back on schedule you will be wishing you had more downtime. The experienced companies, like Power Fuels, know this. That's why you still see them hiring even though they might not have enough work to keep all their drivers hauling right now. Any slowdown here is temporary.

And as far as Swift and Scheider go, last winter led a whole lot of companies and individuals to think they were cut out for the ND oilpatch who WILL NOT be thinking the same thing next winter. I have absolutely no doubt that Swift and Schneider will take a pounding and then decide that a highway company really has no business here, and they'll be right. And that goes for a lot of drivers here too. There was hardly any loss this winter due to the cold, because it just didn't get cold, so everyone who started here in the last year thinks that ND's rep for weather is BS. Well last winter was a fluke, and I can't imagine we'll luck out like that again, so I fully expect an even bigger Tucked Tail Pilgrimage south about late November/early December. (Seems like the combination of the holidays and the bad weather make a lot of people decide not to come back from their week off.) Which will be just fine by me, because that will mean those of us who stay here will be even more valuable.

 

The OTR companies can not afford to hire drivers that are experienced and/or skilled in off road trucking ( 10% grade into a curve filled with 2 feet of mud while haulin 100,005 lbs of fluid filled machinery ). Hess, Conoco, Stat , Oxy, etc, etc - ain't gonna even let a trucking company populated with pavement pushers bid on backwood Bakken barrel haulin.
Texas ( fairweather) may be easier for schnieder and swift to make hay ( or burn it ) but up north it ain't gonna happen for those jackals.