Seasonal work
October to March 31 is usually the busiest time for Oil and gas service, fracturing, and drilling work. Many seasonal drivers will choose to work a 4 to 6 month period. These drivers often work straight through with no days off working the “All the hours you can eat buffet”.
This is getting harder to do as many companies are frowning on hours of service and pushing safety. You may still find a few companies that push the hours, but most of the larger companies won’t.
It’s not just the company you work for monitoring your hours. The oil companies themselves can put a clamp on this and shut you down any time they feel hours are excessive.
If you don’t know what the fracturing service companies do, here’s an easy to understand video on fracturing.
Looking for a company to work for
Word of mouth is one of the best ways to find work, but make sure you trust the source. Never is a “Trucker’s Story” more prevalent than when it comes to how much they make. Claims are often exaggerated, and important details conveniently left out. We’re all salesman when it comes to making something sound better than it is. A great example is when a driver bases his claim on his “best week ever”. Make sure you find out the good, the bad, and the ugly of what can happen during slow times.
If you don’t have a job lined up already, be resourceful in your search. There are many sources to find oilfield jobs since the internet became mainstream over the last 20 years or so. A few of the more popular ones for oilfield jobs in Alberta are Indeed, Kijiji, and jobshop.ca. Select the town you wish to search in before the “jobshop.ca” For example www.calgaryjobshop.ca or www.grandeprairiejobshop.ca.
You can also target specific businesses in a town if you have a good directory to work with like “Oilfield Canada”. You won’t find job listings on this site (hopefully this comes soon), but it’s probably the most thorough listing of all businesses in the Alberta oilfield. You won’t encounter dead searches in their “Find a Service” menu anywhere. Unlike many directories, the categories they show always have businesses in them.
Here’s a quick tutorial,
After clicking on “Find a service” in the top tool bar on the home page, simply use the “where” drop down menu for location by province, or more specifically by town/city. After clicking on the “where”, you can also click on the “what”underneath for another drop down menu. This one is great as it lists all the different categories of businesses you will find in that city or town.
Then you simply click search for the listing. If you see a red arrow, it is a link to that company’s website. This is a great way to start learning about a company. Mission statements say a lot about the attitude of the company.
We covered a lot here already, but we still need to cover what sort of pay can you expect working for different companies. We’ll also have a few warnings on how you should protect yourself when finding a job. This is an issue no matter where you’re working.
Don’t worry, we’ll cover more specifics about the types of oilfield trucking jobs when we get into the driving sections later.
Thanks for reading Oilfield Jobs.
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