Thanks Mike - your helpful advice is much appreciated! I had already e-mailed a few of the companies that had been mentioned by you and others on this thread, including Mile High Employment regarding their possible Class A training. I'll follow up with phone calls, and I'll check out those staffing agencies. Thanks for the warning about the hard physical labor with BH - I'm 56 years old and in great physical shape, very strong, but I would only use BH as a foot in the door to get me started out there.

As for hotshotting, don't you have to own your own truck for that? I just can't afford to do that right now.
Also, how steady is that kind of work?

I am especially interested in what you said about those natural gas plants that would hire and train someone like me who lacks experience - however, when I went back over your previous posts, I did not see any mention of specific names of these companies. Would you mind providing these to me? I googled gas plant driving jobs in ND late last night but didn't find anything, but I was falling asleep so I went to bed without really getting too far into that search.

My thanks to eveyone on this thread for the great info that you have all posted here.

- Roy

 

Roy,

The hotshot outfits have the rigs, they need drivers to drive their equipment. Hotshot work is very very steady work, they make deliveries to the rig/well sites and other companies in the area and in adjoing states. Lots of things break on these rigs, along with bringing in pipe and casing, lots of work 24/7. The gas plants are in need of plant and field operators, no truck driving involved. Hiland Partners is one outfit, Whiting is another, and I think Williams is one. Plants are located in Stanley, Alexander, Epping, Killdeer, Dickinson, Bismarck, etc. Google natural gas suppliers/plants in ND. Hiland is the outfit I am familiar with, they may be hiring again here shortly.

 

Here are some photos from the patch and the living conditions... For what it is worth.



Moving Day! Now living on the shores of the MIGHTY Yellowstone River! Time to buy a fishing rig! My boss's son just pulled a 120 lb Paddle Fish out of the river the other day, almost 6 feet LONG!



The large bedroom in our 2 bedroom FEMA trailer...



Bathroom in our FEMA trailer, it has a huge shower, no bathtub...



Laundry and entrance to my bedroom...



Our kitchen...



Shopping downtown Sidney MT... God I LOVE this place!



A typical rig site...



Getting ready to "Strap" a tank for oil levels on a production site... Tanks are 20' tall, with ladder access.



Halliburton Frac Site



Cleaning out a pit on a drill site



Offloading water into one giant open top tank for a future frac job. The black tank behind the truck holds tens of thousands of barrels of water, we pump it in via the silver pipes hanging off the side of the tank. There is no top, all open, and the guys assemble these open units in a matter of hours.



This is Richard and Bill, two guys i used to work with. We were loading production water at a site to take to disposal.



A couple of oil field workers playing pull tabs, each one of those tickets in that pile cost a quarter, that was their third pile that night.



My favorite place to fuel my pickup...



Loading Butane in the Bakken...



Cool weather pattern while loading propane...



General opinion up here, other than the few welfare queens and college students in Fargo.



Well, i hope you enjoyed the photos! I'm just sitting here in our new LaZboy recliner purchased at Johnson's Hardware watching our new 60 inch TV and listening via our new 7.1 surround setup... Yes, 7 speakers and a sub in our little FEMA trailer... Sharp 60" LCD on a Bell'o stand, Marantz 1402 AVR, Polk RTi A L/R and Polk CSi A6 center with 4 Polk ceiling mounted OWM3 Surround Speakers, Velodyne Impact 10 Sub, Emotiva Mini-X Amp, DirecTV HD DVR (ALL THE CHANNELS), Starchoice/Shaw HD DVR (Canadian Satellite TV for Detroit locals and Lions Football), Sony Blu-ray Player... This thing rocks, and I can connect my iPhone and Apple MacBook Pro via blue tooth to stream audio and my iTunes library through the Marantz AVR to listen all sorts of stuff... Totally cool! I think I will add another Emotiva amp and another pair of Polk surrounds and run those into my bedroom, then I can stream whatever I want into the privacy of my own room... Yeah, I'm an audio video geek...

Me and Pat (my new co-worker and roommate) are heading to the Sidney Country Club in the morning to be fitted for a set of Pings... And a membership... That's a Golf Course... And Ping is a golf club manufacturer... For you all in Rio Linda...

This is so stupid up here... And don't stress on me, this is the first bit of splurging I have done in a year, even the wife is cool with it... God I LOVE HER!

And who is Pat my roommate? Well a guy that posted a few pages back asking me to call him... He is from Michigan, a home boy, really great guy and he golfs! Hog heaven baby, hog heaven!

Mike

Totally f'n INSANE!

God I love BIG OIL! Saved my life and my families future from those jack asses in DC. You all Vote for Romney, or all of this to will be gone in a year or two, and I will be selling this gear on Craig's List along with my Pings! We will all be screwed, Elections have consequences. Enough said.

 

Mike, looks like your doin fine. Alot nicer than my sleeper berth or ship berthing. Hey where's old glory.. Thought you'd see it flying On the rigs. I'm throttling forward on getting my jarine ass up there. Gears in motion
Work'n on getting home so I can get to dmv& get endorsements. Plan on being there late June. You said company s will be ramping up for the summer. Are you aware of the hiring prospects. Will apply to outfits I located through your intell..
Then hope to get interviews. Keep us informed on the good and bad. God bless America...

 

Hey guys. I'm new to the forum but have been reading a lot of the posts. I'm thinking of going out there to try to make some real $$. I have applied to a few jobs online but haven't heard anything yet. I applied to mbi
Energy services. Has anyone worked for them? They say they have housing but they charge. Anyone now how much housing costs? I'm wondering if I should just pack up and go out there cause I'm not getting any
Response from online apps. I don't know if they only want people that are already on the ground there or not.
It's kind of a risk for me to just leave my current job and head out. I have had a cdl before and have
Experience driving all kinds of trucks. Just not tanker. Even though I had that endorsement.
When I moved to the state I currently live in I didnt carry the cdl over cause I hadnt driven in a while and
Didn't have a valid medical card. I checked with the state I moved from and they said if I transfer my license
Back they would reissue my cdl. So I would of course do that before coming up. I know there are a ton of small towns where this work is happening. Anyone have a suggestion for towns I should check out first for work? I
Don't want to be without work for more than a few days. Is that possible? Any tips or suggestions you guys
Have would be very helpful. Thanks

 

Make sure you have all your endorsements before applying for any of these jobs. No endorsements no work, I would say they have already given your aps the file 13 treatment. Get your license in order and resubmit, also call the staffing agencies in Minot. As far as MBI... Hear more bad than good regarding them, BUT, allot of outfits look at their training program with jealousy. MBI training is a resume enhancer if you can find a way to get hired in, they are ANAL. I do hear they have allot of turnover, so you may get lucky. It would be a good place to start to get a foot in the door up here until you find a better outfit to work for. As far as their housing, hit and miss, as of a few weeks ago in the western side of ND none was available from what I heard from a new hire at my outfit.

And keep an eye on Craig's List, check at least a few times a day. Many companies will only post for a day or two, in my case only a few hours in regards to the outfit I am currently employed by. They get their guy(s) and immediately pull the ad.

Good luck!

Mike

 

Pretty good description up here. If you come up, have a job and housing secured... This story is pretty spot on, at least in the Williston area. Hell, I don't even like to go there unless absolutely necessary... I'll drive the 90 miles to Dickinson.

Interesting that you have to go to an UK publication to read about what is going on in our own backyard? Imagine that? And this picture that is painted is true, but I would say a bit embellished. It is not THAT bad up here, but can be if you do not play your cards right, don't come up here cold unless you have a decent bankroll, at least a few grand.

Here is the link to the original story: m.guardian.co.uk

Traffic generated by an oil boom lines the main street in Watford City, North Dakota. Photograph: Bloomberg via Getty Images
Suzanne Goldenberg in North Dakota
guardian.co.uk, Mon 14 May 2012 15.40 BST

It's a life measured out in 18-hour shifts and washed down with 5-hour Energy Drinks and Red Bull, a job on the rigs in North Dakota's oil boom: three weeks on, two weeks off, in exchange for $100,000 or more a year and the promise of being set up for life.

In an America where 18m are out of work, the chance of finding any job – let alone a well-paid job – exerts an irresistible force that is drawing thousands to North Dakota in a 21st century re-enactment of the Gold Rush.

Only this time, it's oil. North Dakota now produces more oil than several members of Opec, and many in the industry are predicting America will soon overtake Saudi Arabia and even Russia as the world's top oil producer.

To do that, however, the oil fields need more workers than the thinly populated state of North Dakota can possibly supply. Scores of people arrive every day looking for a new start, a second chance in lives wrecked by personal troubles and the recession.

"A new guy can come out here and fall off a turnip truck and make $50,000, $60,000 easy as long as he can pass a piss test and tie his boots up," said Don Beaty, an oil worker from Alaska.

But not everyone is lucky, and the oil rush has brought chaos and big city troubles, like bar fights, prostitution and violent crime, to once placid small towns.

'It's hard to find any other kind of life'

It's 9am by the time Ben Hitchcock finishes his 18-hour workday, overseeing the blend of sand, water, and chemicals used by a major oil company to blast oil out of the rock. He's due back on again at 5pm, just enough time to bolt a free buffet breakfast and catch up on some sleep in his small cubicle at the "man camp", the housing laid on by the oil company.

His crew is near the end of their three-week stint. They are worn down, forgetful, and worried about making mistakes. "The number one killer is falling asleep," Hitchcock said. "You are up for 20 hours, you have to jump in the semi, rig everything up, and people just fall asleep and then go run off the road."

Those thoughts weigh on him, he said. So do the separations. He is in his 50s now. His marriage ended. He sees his teenage children in two-week bursts. "It's hard to have a life with this. It's hard to find any other kind of life," he said. "I don't want to do this forever."

But there's reward with the risk. Hitchcock hopes one day to run a brew pub in Colorado. He bought the building, an old church. Now he is working for the equipment and furnishings. He figures he is a year or two away from saving up enough to cash out and live his dream.

There are hundreds of Hitchcocks – at least – in North Dakota's oil rush. The state is now pumping about 560,000 barrels of oil a day, second only to Texas within the US.

What that means, is that small towns that had been settling into slow decay are now bursting with opportunities. Williston, the biggest urban area, produced 14,000 new jobs in the last two years. That's more than the entire population of the town just a few years ago.

There still aren't the people to fill them, and there is no place for them to stay if they do turn up. McDonald's is offering signing bonuses of $300. Wal-Mart is putting employees up in hotels. The owner of the local paper, the Williston Herald, is putting up staff in her basement in-law suite.

In the even smaller town of Stanley, also in the oil patch, Michelle Maguire is paying $950 a month to park her RV in a farmers' field two miles out of town – and that's considered reasonable. Camper parking spots, with no utilities, rent for up to $1,400.

Still it's painful when she considers the farmer is making about $100,000 a year renting out parking spaces, and that she is paying as much to keep her family of four in a 44-ft trailer as she is to hang on to the family home in Montana. Milk is $6 a gallon, a shower at the local truck stop costs $10.

"A lot of us have mortgages in another state and we come here and pay the same for a lot as we do for a mortgage," she said. "We don't want to stay here this long but we do because if we go back home we lose our house. Some of these people's houses have been in the family for years and years and they are terrified."

It's a frightening time for locals too. Older residentsW are being priced out of their apartments or rattled by the thousands of heavy trucks pounding along country roads. Paper girls carry pepper spray on their delivery route. Women warn each other not to venture into the Wal-Mart parking lot alone. Newcomers shat on the floor of the local community centre. The town plans to build 2,000-3,000 new housing units in 2012; but it still can't keep up.

People pouring into town by train, car and foot

It's 9pm when the men, and one or two women, start bedding down for the night at Concordia Lutheran church. Fifty-four people slept on fold-out cots in the church hall one recent night, and that's not counting the dozens of cars in the parking lots or those Pastor Jay Reinke has taken into his own home. "We're the only church doing this," he said. "It wasn't by design." It's just hard to say no. "A lot of the people have lost a lot by the time they get here. They are kind of raw pastorally, you can see that," Reinke said.

One day last summer a desperate man who had been sleeping in his car for weeks begged the pastor for money to go back home. Now people arrive daily, riding the Empire Builder train from Chicago or the West Coast, by car, or even on foot. Some are down to their last few dollars, Reinke said.

But his charges are not misfits or transients, he insisted. Most find work of some kind in town, thrilled to be earning $12 or $13 an hour at the local Dairy Queen. But that's not enough to pay for rent or groceries in the North Dakota oil boom. Unless they can move up and out to an oil field job, a few weeks or months from now – once they get fed up of sleeping in a church hall or a car – they are going to be forced to decide whether to move on.

The clock is ticking for Grayling Smith, a plumber from Las Vegas who was making a good living until the recession popped that boom. In quick succession, he lost his job, his marriage and his home, and he moved in with his mother in Houston and his teenage girls.

It's his second trip to the oil boom. The first round worked out all right, initially. Smith found work as a roustabout. But it was a harder atmosphere than he was used to. He was shaken by stories of wells blowing up where men had died. He was taken aback by racial slurs.

"It's pretty cut-throat up here. The guys are pretty rough. These men have been doing this for quite some time – generations some of them – and we come up here not knowing anything. We are green, and they just thrown us in," he said. "The competition is pretty stout."

But his first pay cheque was for $2,400, so Smith stuck it out, until last March when he was so homesick he just walked off the job and went home. They were always looking for workers in the oil fields, he reasoned. There would always be another job.

Except there wasn't for Grayling, when he returned in mid-March, and a few of the recruiters have told him that at 53 he may be too old. "If that is not discouraging and a slap in the face, I don't know what is," he said.

He's still going to try to stick it out in boom town, but he's no longer dreaming of striking it rich. "My goal is just to make enough money so that I can send some home and maybe, somewhere on the outskirts of Vegas, buy a home for $80,000 and have that to leave to the kids," he said. "At least I can do that for them, give them something to start from."

 

Creeds, shoot me a pm with your phone #, or just post it if you can't pm, I'll call you, as we are ramping up... Get your endorsements together, I will see what I can do... We now start at $28 an hour straight time, no OT, $45 a day per diem, free furnished housing, normal hours are 60 to 80+ a week, we run legal with 34 hour resets and on board computerized logs. Raises ($1 an hour) every 90 days, Quarterly safety bonuses of $250 (easy money), full bennies after 90 (BCBS) dental and eye, $1 night differential if you want to work with the cool kids...

You will need a vehicle up here, it is a 52 mile round trip from the housing in Alexander ND to Fairview MT where the shop is. DO NOT even think of coming up here without a vehicle. I charge $20+ a ride, CASH, and that is if I am "feeling" nice, on a good day

Just don't yank my chain... I don't do this very often, but I have a 100% track record here with the guys I have recommended, if you know what I mean...

Semper Fi Brother...

Mike

Oh, Halliburton ALWAYS flys Old Glory, as do most all outfits up here, you just cannot see it in the photo of the frac site... Our office has flowers... Shrugging shoulders... But trust me, we are one hell of a patriotic bunch, we have a good crew here, weeded more than a few out... No drama allowed here, this is the PATCH, not JB Hunt, if you know what I mean. Pussies and wannabe bureaucrat's need not apply.

And... If you look closely at the rig site photo above, she is flying, above the slide... Oooh RAH!

 

Justruckin, I wanted to send you a PM to ask about the North Dakota driving jobs.. buuut.. I dont know this site very well.. and I cant seem to find out how to PM you. I just had some questions and wanted some info about work up there.

 

Just hit my name above and you should be able to contact me.

Mike