Quote:
Originally Posted by phoneman
So how much physical work is involved in these driving jobs in North Dakota? I don't mind work, but am getting up in age. I am OTR hazmat tanker driver class A, and I am used to hooking up hoses, and climbing, and stuff. Which job would be up my alley you think?
The Mile High jobs are very labor intensive, young mans work, but I did it... I'm 47
Now, driving jobs... Water hauling is easy, 3 and 4 inch hoses with cam locks. Pull them off the side of the truck and hook them up. Most of your time will be spent waiting to load and unload. Hardest part of job is staying awake.
Propane, butane and Y grade is the same, 2 and 3 inch hoses, piece of cake.
Frac sand hauler, or "sand can", sit in cab and hit switch, cant get any easier than that. I know a few guys in their 70's hauling sand up here...
Side and belly dump, sit in cab and hit switch, again, very easy work.
Crude hauler, you may have to climb stairs to strap tanks, tanks are roughly 20 feet tall, stairs, not ladders. Normal sized hoses, nothing weird.
The water hauling jobs are the most plentiful up here, followed by crude... Frac sand and belly dump jobs are a bit harder to obtain, usually they hire guys that are already up here, but not always. Allot of O/O hauling the gravel and sand with other guys trailers. What I tell guys is to take a job to get up here, get a feel for what is happening and go from there. like I said earlier, jobs are plentiful up here, under 1% unemployment in my area. And, we are getting more housing by the day.
Most companies want you to do basic maintenance on trucks, make sure they are greased, replace bulbs, etc. I have worked most driving jobs up here, and am putting on weight, very little if any labor involved other than pulling and lifting empty hoses and lines.
Hope this answers your question... And, hiring season is just starting up here, allot of water, sand and gravel to be moved this year, up to 400 wells scheduled to go in this year, and it takes all of the above equipment to make it all happen.
One note on crude, we have so much of it that we run short on storage, which means that some days the crude haulers will not work. Most of the oil is delivered to tank farms and loaded on rail cars, or is directly injected into existing pipelines. The XL Pipeline that was cancelled really hurt, as the plan was to hook into that line to alleviate our over capacity issues, a million barrels were the first years numbers to pipe to Houston, our Governor up here was p-ssed.
So, we have rail and limited capacity pipelines, and Warren Buffet's BNSF Railway is slow to get the needed rail and tank car assets assembled up here to keep up with our insane production, which has already broke 1 million barrels a year, and climbing. We needed that XL pipeline, plans are now in the works to send our oil to Canada via rail, and then off to China. At least that is the word on the street. A real shame that very few want our own oil to stay here, but we have to send it somewhere.
Last numbers I have heard in regards to our oil reserves up here were 24 billion barrels right under my feet. Some are estimating up to 1 trillion barrels with our current technology. The Bakken Marcellus play is said to go right to the shores of Lake Michigan, dwarfing Saudi Arabia and much of the Middle East, if not all of it entirely.
Mike
