Jobs in ND Oil Patch

LightsOutND,
Does Power Fuels lease owner/operators? I'm an owner (not an operator) and a Minot native that needs to move his truck now! Any help you can offer would be great as I'm not exactly in the business.

 

No they don't. I believe they use to but I don't think they are anymore. They have trucks coming out their ears of their own. Probably one of the biggest fleets in ND.

 

Yes we have leasers but I don't think they are looking for any more until this winter. One of our drivers just bought a couple trucks and is going to be leasing them on this winter which is what I'm basing that on. It's worth a phone call to find out if you are interested. The Tioga office runs quite a few leasers. I don't know if they are looking for more right now. The highest payed freshwater leasers I know of right now are pulling for MBI, but I believe they require you to have the tractor and trailer and I also don't know if they are looking for any drivers.

 

AC22 and Gisquid- Look I am a driver, not a recruiter so I really don't give a crap if you believe me or not. If you want to stay home and pound on your keyboards, knock yourselves out. You don't need to call me a liar to make yourself feel better about your lack of ambition.

The two guys at Wally World worked in Little Falls, MN. They asked for a transfer to Williston, ND and got it, they work there right now. They are actually going to be stopping by here sometime tomorrow. They exist and they make exactly what I said, I wasn't talking about overtime or I would have said overtime. If you want to check it out, swing in some night and ask for Wayne and his son Alex. Wayne's easy to spot, he has a bad eye so he always wears tinted glasses.

I haul freshwater, and I am not paid by the load or by the barrel. There are no hourly guys where I work unless they push paper in the office. The truck is paid by the hour. The driver is paid a percentage plus bonuses. I know what the ads say on the radio, I hear them. Meghan will tell you the same thing if you call that number on the radio, 60-90K. That's a low estimate geared towards the day shift out-of-staters who go home for a week every month.

I will break down the pay for you since you seem so hung up the hourly pay. The truck makes $125-$145 an hour, depending on which oil company you're hauling to. You are payed a base of 18% to start, which jumps to 19% at 90 days. You start 1% higher if you have oilpatch experience. It goes up 1% yearly up to 22% which is the current top pay rate (I think). The company I haul for most often (about 75% of the time) is Hess at $130 an hour. They have special safety requirements which translates into more paperwork for me so Power Fuels pays us an extra 2% when we haul to a Hess site. (So that's 20-24% of the truck's take.) You can work 6 days a week. You will bill 12 truck hours a day, sometimes 14. Yes I know that's over 70 hours for the week, this is how the oilpatch runs. If you are really worried about it you can quit every week at 70 hours and drive the truck back to the shop, nobody get's pissed that's how lots of drivers do it. You are paid $5 an hour extra for working nights, get $30 a day to ride the bus to work, get $25 a day for working a Saturday or a Sunday, and get an extra $100 if they call you in on a day off to work. There is a $750 sign on bonus. There is a quarterly bonus that will be 1-4% of what your TRUCK (not you) grossed that quarter. You break out your calculator and do some figuring and tell me if you don't come up with over $100K possible IF you take advantage of all the above and work as much as you can. I just checked my old paystubs. I made 60K in my first 7 1/2 months, and the first 3 weeks got paid training wages which is $15 an hour, so I didn't even make full wages that whole time. So yes what you've heard is low a lot like I said.

And just so you know if the truck breaks down you are still paid $15 an hour, $20 an hour on nights, just to sit around until quitting time. There is also a referral bonus if someone uses your name, and other bonuses that you can get like mileage pay if you drive yourself to work (I think it's at $.51 a mile right now) or $20 for driving a company vehicle out to shift change on site. To work in the oilpatch you need FR clothing which is very expensive. Power Fuels gives you coveralls to start then gives you a $250 card to use on FR's at 90 days. They give you a new set of coveralls (or bibs if you'd prefer) every spring and fall plus pretty much all the other equipment you need. They're not afraid to spend money on their employees, we are always getting something at the safety meetings, last time it was a dozen pairs of FR gloves for each driver. The pay is real I am not using any Democrat party math, that's what I make. I'm pretty much done repeating myself to you about how much this job pays me so don't bother asking me any more.

AC22 what do you care about the benefits since you don't believe what I'm telling you anyways? I don't even know why I'm spending all this time telling you this. Unless you get hired on, stay for 90 days, and use my name as a referral I don't ever see a dime for it. In case somebody else wants to know, I have Blue Cross Blue Shield health ins, dental and vision for my whole family of 4. It costs about $250 per pay period. I get paid every other week. The health insurance is 90/10. Another driver, a good friend of mine just had a baby about 3 months ago, his part of the whole bill was $1200 bucks. I think you wait 90 days for insurance. They match 100% up to 3% on 401K (I think it's 3% anyways, I don't have that). Power Fuels has lots of houses, apartments, mancamps, etc. that they own or hold leases on. They rent them to you at cost and take it out of your paycheck. They don't make any money off them, they only charge what they pay for them. There is PTO which you get as soon as you're done with orientation, I think you get 5 days to start with but I am not sure since I don't take days off. I said above that they pay you $15 an hour to train you, if you train on night sthey also pay you night pay, $5 an hour. They also pay overtime on that after 40 hours a week. You will probably spend about 3 weeks training, one in class and 2 in trucks on the job. Sometimes people take an extra week or two to figure the job out, they don't mind as long as you have a good attitude.

I have found Power Fuels to be the most accommodating (schedule and living quarter-wise), forgiving (lazy/crappy driver-wise), best paying company driver job I've ever heard of, which is why we pull so many drivers from other companies like Missouri Basin, Key and Haliburton. If you want to go by what you heard from a guy who heard from his cousin who read a note on a napkin about a radio ad, then be my guest. I live and work here and I get a Power Fuels paystub in the mail every other Friday, so what would I possibly know about driving in the oilpatch for Power Fuels, right?

 

hi driver you mention that
" One of our drivers just bought a couple trucks and is going to be leasing them on this winter which is what I'm basing that on". if there any positbility that in the future i can contact your friend driver if he is going to lease and is in needs of a driver ? ( i mean im trying to get around in orther to work with power fuel siince we know that i dont have checks stubs from my 2 years expereicce. thank you for your valuable information .

 

LightsOutND,

Thanks for the info and the encouragement. I am willing to pay my dues, working for a year doing a good job for whoever will hire me. My m.o. is "slow and sure", while still holding up my end of the deal. Hopefully that will keep me from messing up the equipment and make me a more desirable hire.

As for finding someone that might hire me, I have already received a PM response expressing interest. He sounds like a straight-shooter. I plan on getting back to him shortly and we'll see where it goes from there. (I've got to post 7 times before I can respond to him!)

Thanks again. It sounds like there are some opportunities for anyone tough enough to endure it, or in my case, someone too stubborn to let the circumstances beat 'em.

 

OnTheGo562,

Yes sir, I've done a little bit of everything it seems. I'm hoping to spend the next few years driving a truck in the oil patch. The biggest unknown at the moment is accommodations. Hoping to avoid buying a trailer and the truck to pull it with. But if that is the situation, I'll have to figure out a way to get it done.

 

All right, I've got to post seven times in order to respond to a PM sent me. This post should count as the 4th.

 

My apologies to everyone for the empty post. This is number 5.

 

Number 6. Just learned that a post has to have at least 10 characters.