Just spilled 10 gallons of crude and was fired, can I still find a job hauling crude?

Supervisor certified me this morning, ran my own loads for real pay. I'm on my own now, 3 loads 11 hours $400 bucks today. Will be faster tomorrow since I will not have to demonstrate for certification.

 

Day 2 flying solo same as day 1, 12 hours 3 loads 280 miles $400. I'm getting exhausted, haven't had a day to unwind since I left Louisiana 10 days ago, need to take a day off here in the next few days. Still haven't been moved to ND which is grating on my nerves, I have valuables in my truck bed that I don't want wet and my tarp job reminds me daily I suck at tarping a pickup. Thing is getting shredded driving to work every day, need my permanent housing so I can empty the truck. Jury is still out here for me but I'm making some money. I think my orientation group of 5 is down to 3 now, I expect that number to get smaller. Weather has actually been beautiful mostly, 30's in the morning but 50's-70's by afternoon.

 

Got situated in permanent housing in North Dakota a week ago, been having trouble posting here on my phone but got internet hooked up finally. Been making pretty good money, some days are $300ish, some days are $400ish and a few days have been $500ish. The money seems legit, the housing situation is what I expected, the internet situation isn't very good but it's not terrible just really ####### expensive. My biggest gripe so far is that the equipment is kind of ####, been in half a dozen trucks and none of them have been in particularly good shape and several have had me sitting waiting on reparis (tires on two trucks, PTO pump on one, broken trailer welds on one, leaking crude pump on another). Oilfield work is hard on equipment and I expect the trucks to be well worn but I was surprised at how significant some of the mechanical issues were. Lease roads up here are nowhere near as rutted and potholed and in general disrepair as the lease roads I drove in Louisiana but for some reason the trucks are just not in very good shape. I think it has a lot to do with the nature of the workforce up here, turnover is really high and a lot of newer drivers don't know how to keep their gear up to snuff or they are just gone so quick they never get settled in enough to write up their issues for repair. I've been assigned a regular truck so I should be able to get it in good order in the next couple of weeks and that should mostly be the end of that problem. Overall pretty content with where I landed here, I'm in Watford City which is a small but quickly growing town like many others in this area. There are places to eat, buy groceries and all of the other things you need to get by. I'm finding that I'm running out of hours too fast, we paper log which I haven't done in years but it's a bit like riding a bike and allows you a small amount of flexibility in your hours. I've been running on my own for the past week and a half but my slip seat partner is coming back from vacation on Friday, and that will be the real test. When my slip gets back I'm going to be limited to 12 hour days and I'm curious to see how that will affect my revenue and how well I'll be able to work within that framework to still earn double what I was making in Louisiana. One thing I've noticed here is the wind, it's windy as hell more days than it's not. Right now the weather is decent so it's not a big deal, but when it gets cold that wind is going to suck. Overall things are going well here, the company has been good and the work is there, if you have the time and the inclination you can run extra loads. The way the trucks and LACT's are setup for offload is unnerving, I'm used to dry-lok hookups for offloads and we use 4" lines with the dog ears and blow the loads off the truck with the crude pump. The well sites are the nicest I've ever seen though, only thing that sucks is we work tanks by API standards which is a real time sink. Looking forward to my first legitimate payday up here, training pay is coming Friday, two Fridays after that I will see my first real check although it will be short a day because my schedule had to be synced with my slip seat. Things are going well overall and I'm looking forward to making some real money.

 

I've been hauling oil four times longer than my trainer, I could probably show him a few shortcuts. I just need some time to get a feel for how things work here before I know what shortcuts are going to be okay and which ones are not. Picked up some cold weather FR today, the coveralls I had were not going to make the grade. First 2 week pay period of oil hauling is over, gross looks like about $4500 give or take $100. This is just a little more than double what I was making hauling crude in Louisiana, if it holds up (big if given I have a slip seat partner entering the equation and winter about to set in) this will prove to be a good move. I'm optimistic that worst case I can maintain a 50% pay increase over Louisiana crude. We have a substantial safety bonus system in place here, $1500 a quarter if you don't spill or have accidents, minus $25/day for paperwork errors. Quarterly that is more bonus than I saw in 3 years in Louisiana. Money wise this looks like a really solid venture, hopefully the intangibles don't gum up the works.

 

Update:
Got my first regular check Friday, it was an 11 day check instead of the normal 12 because I had to take an extra day off to get my schedule lined up with my night driver. Two week check was $4100 gross which was $300 less than I had calculated but I was figuring blind because they don't tell you what loads pay, you find out what they pay when you get your check stub. All loads are itemized on your check stub, as you haul more loads and see more checks you will know better what each load pays. I was just calling my trainer with my loads to see what they paid, so not off too much on the guesstimate. Money seems pretty good, next check will be 12 days but there were a couple slow days in there so I figure it will be about the same maybe a couple hundred more.

The work is fine, hauling oil is pretty much the same no matter where you are. The housing is not bad, we are in FEMA trailers and I got my DirecTV hooked up a week or so ago, internet a week or so before that so home time is not a total bore. From day one my biggest gripe has been maintenance, and that appears to be the way things are here. The problem is two-fold, apparently getting and keeping mechanics is difficult, and the high turnover rate in drivers means not enough trucks have drivers in them long enough to push the trucks through the maintenance they need. Some drivers just never write anything up for fixing which just compounds the problem. I was told all the equipment is nice 2012 or newer gear, it is all 2012 or newer but it's all beat to ####, very poorly maintained and as best I can tell never washed. Washing might seem trivial and to an extent it is, but crude oil trucks have lots of hose fittings and the like that grit makes short work of. Also being that these are commercial hazmat vehicles there is lots of reflective tape, lights and most importantly placards that are under layers of road ####. When it's sub-zero temps and windchills (like today's -4 windchill) just wiping off the grime/mud is not really possible.

The weekly safety meetings are a bit much but that's not really all that unusual. The office folks are serious paperwork Nazis, we do all of our loads in a computer but at this point I have no idea why since we duplicate and triplicate a lot of stuff that's already in the computer system. Again not all that unusual, just annoying. So big picture, really good money, really bad maintenance, really annoying minutia. We have been told almost weekly since I got here that they are hiring new mechanics, setting up facilities where we are at and they have made some improvements in the short time I've been here on facilities although they have a LONG way to go on that front too. It's still too soon to say if this place is right for me, but I committed to 6 months when I hired on and I will honor that. In 6 months some of these problems might be worked out. As long as the equipment is in good enough shape to make money that's the most important thing, and right now I've lost around $1000 in loads due to maintenance issues. My supervisors from top to bottom have been good, dispatchers here I'm honestly not even sure what they do. I think they put together the dispatch for the next shift and talk to the customers on the phone, other than that I've honestly been left scratching my head more often than not when I call them. It seems like a legit company that grew much faster than it was prepared for and now they are in catch up mode. I'm hoping they catch up soon, the pay is excellent and I HATE changing companies. Any questions besides "who do you work for" I would be happy to answer.