Driving in the Oilfield

When you say ticket time do you mean pay by the hour or demurrage? Not familiar with that term.

 

I've never done it myself either. It was fairly common with water haulers in the past... I'm told. I don't think may do it any more. It could pretty lucrative for the driver was my understanding. Similiar to a mechanic working off of book time. If you can beat the ticket time you give yoursepf a raise.

 

Maybe that's what I understand as "detention time". I get $50 an hour after two hours.

 

Ticket time for water haulers used to be very common. Wells were allocated a time for hauling a load of water off of them and that was how the load was billed out. Two hours was a minimum for many of the wells close to the disposal. We had a lot of wells where the water was only going a few miles and you could easily turn the loads in an hour and a half. In that instance, one-half of an hour's wages would be added to the amount of your regular hourly wages on that job. We had one big ranch in particular that you could do nine loads a day on that each took about an hour and a half to do. In that example and assuming you were making $20 per hour, your wages that day would be your hours actually worked times $20, plus your hourly wage rate times one-half (for the extra one-half hour you gained) times nine (for the nine loads you hauled). So...in that instance, say you worked fourteen hours that day, you would be paid for eighteen and a half hours. (the fourteen hours you actually worked plus the extra thirty minutes you earned on each of the nine wells). You could rack up some big bucks hauling water if you hustled.

 

Now I know why I use to see water haulers hauling ### all the time; and blowing past my truck like a bat out of hell!

 

who do you work for?

 

ACME

 

Now that they're all being paid by the hour (thanks to e-logs), you can't get a water hauler to go faster than 45 on a 65 MPH road.

 

25% is how much? roughly...thanks

 

If the load pays $1000 to the truck, gross driver pay is $250. No nonsense like deducting fuel or payroll taxes, that's on the owner of the truck. I'm on pace to earn about $75K gross wages this year. As owner of the truck my settlements are good, but my truck is a money sinkhole.

I'm looking at getting a more durable, dependable truck next year. The trailer will be paid off next month, so with both the truck and trailer paid that will accelerate setting aside to buy that truck.