Oilfield Jobs

If you type “Oilfield Jobs” as a keyword search with the search engines, you’ll find job boards, companies and directories listing available work. This may or may not benefit you if you’re new to this career. The first thing new people to the industry should be considering is whether or not this is a step they really should take.

If you just joined us on this page from a web search, welcome to the 2nd part of an 8 page series on Oilfield Trucking.




There’s a lot of things to consider before you start looking for oil field jobs. First, you may have to spend lots of money to get yourself there. Second, consider that a company can spend thousands of dollars training you for the job. This is an important decision you’re making with investment on both sides. Of all the people that come to Alberta each year for oilfield jobs, many return home very quickly.

The investment could be wasted on both accounts if it isn’t an educated decision.

Many drivers hear about the great paychecks they’ll get, but might not like what they have to do to earn them. Lying on your back in mud to repair something broken in the middle of nowhere, chaining up at -40 with frozen hands, sliding down an icy hill backwards at 3 am with nobody around. These are all things that can happen to you.

Make sure you give some thought to things like:

• How will this impact your life, family or financial situation?
• Are you willing to make this sacrifice and commitment?
• Is the sacrifice going to pay off?
• Where are you going to live?
• Are you prepared for the lifestyle change?
• Can you work in extreme weather conditions?
• Can you drive in mud, snow, ice, and use tire chains?
• Are you prepared for the physical requirements?
• Are you aware of the strict drug and alcohol testing requirements by almost all companies?
• Can you deal with boredom, and social isolation?
• What level of self discipline do you possess?

Think about these things before you start your job search. An educated decision always involves weighing out the good and the bad.

Drivers that don’t consider these issues often end up returning home within weeks of arriving in the oilfields. I’ve listened to beer bets whether or not a newbie was going to “make it” or not. Working in the “Patch”, is not for everyone.

We’re all familiar with the term “Play your cards right”. The purpose of this article is to help you do that. Your license to drive a truck is your card, and we want you to play it right.

The information we provide is meant to be a reality check, not a deterrent from oilfield jobs. Leaving a decent job to find out this life isn’t for you could hurt you financially. If you’re already living from check to check, you may want to consider a temporary leave of absence so you don’t lose your current job.

I’ve asked many truck drivers why they came to work in the patch and the most popular answer is, “To pay off some bills, then go back home with the extra money.”

As noted above, one of the things mentioned was your level of self-discipline. We don’t just mean self-discipline as it relates to work habits. If you lack financial self-discipline you may end up in the same position as many others do. A bigger pile of bills with more toys to pay for.

We all have the best of intentions, but we can also be sucked into the vortex of spending more as we make it, or even beyond our means. This means the bills never do get paid off, and there’s no extra money to go back home with.

Prepare yourself for “Spring Break-up”

Spring break-up occurs each spring when load weight restrictions, and road bans occur. The costs of doing business is significantly increased as load volumes must be reduced for roads with weight restrictions. If the economy is booming, it could mean double the loads. If the economy is normal or down, it could mean no work and possibly a longer than normal break up period.

Certain areas will no longer be accessible due to the frost leaving the ground. (This occurs in muskeg or swampy areas where ice roads are built up to support the weight of the trucks.) Other roads may apply temporary bans for any commercial traffic over one ton.

Spring break-up has to be part of your decision making process for truck driving employment in the west. Some companies will pay you a base salary through this period, while others may lay you off. There’ll always be companies that are better to work for than others. We’ll cover this in the next section when we take a closer look at truckers salaries.

Spring break-up can last as little as a week or two in some areas, and up to a couple of months in others. There’s no hard and determined time regarding the break-up period. It depends on the structure of the road, amount of frost, snow, and general economic conditions (The price of Gas or oil.)

There are sometimes exceptions and special permits that allow people to keep working through breakup. These depend on the oil company and road use agreements. Some oil companies also own and maintain their own roads.

Continue reading Oilfield Jobs…..

Oilfield jobs and Managing your Money

Money management is important in any feast or famine industry. If you work hard and are busy for 10 months of the year, you’ll have a great vacation. If not, you could hope a layoff will allow you to collect unemployment benefits.

Be prepared for the possibility of sporadic pay. You may want that $40/hr job, but it could be prone to temporary slowdowns throughout the year. You may be better off at $30/hr for a steadier paying job. Remember the story of the tortoise and the hare?

The oil and gas industry isn’t recession proof. There’s been thousands of layoffs and slowdowns since the economic downturn of 2008. Alberta weathered the recession better than other parts of the world, but it still hurt them. This was also not the first recession to hit the oilfields in the last 50 years. Even more recently the crash of 2015 which is the worst one since 1980.

Remember that:

NOTHING IN LIFE IS GUARANTEED BUT DEATH AND TAXES!

You’ll also find out that the turnover rate with oilfield jobs is extremely high due to a number of different factors. Here’s a few of the main ones.

1. Availability of jobs – The shortage of qualified truck drivers in the country also applies to oilfield trucking. There’s so many oilfield jobs available that drivers tend to try many different jobs before they find one they like. A qualified driver can quit one job and have another the next day.
2. Competitiveness of companies to pay higher wages – Unlike the rest of the trucking industry, supply and demand affect wages much faster in a captive and remote market. If the work needs to get done, companies are more willing to raise the rates and wages to do it.
3. Contract work changing hands – Drivers often follow the work instead of the company. If a company loses a contract, they tend to lose drivers with it. There is virtually no loyalty in this business.
4. Work can frequently shift to different regions – The oilfields cover a huge area of the west, making hot spots fairly common. One winter season may be very busy in one town, but slow in another. The next winter it could be the complete opposite. This means that transient drivers will move around from town to town to follow the work. The focus of drilling work can also follow big “Finds” just like a Yukon gold rush.

With this in mind, be prepared to move, change jobs, or even companies if you have to. Stability is not the same in this industry. You may find a great company getting into this industry on your first attempt, but it’s highly unlikely. There’s an extremely high number of transient workers for a reason.

If you have a license to drive a tractor trailer, or straight truck with an air brake ticket, you’re at an advantage. You shouldn’t have a problem finding work before coming to Alberta. This usually will allow you to get a better job, and better wages, even with no oilfield experience.

If you don’t already have a class one license, you’re still in luck. There are many oilfield companies that offer in house truck driver job training. Many of the fracturing service companies do this with their crews. They’re often a little more stable to work for than some of the smaller companies and offer a truck driver salary as a base. On top of this, you get paid job bonuses for each job you do. The more experience you gain, the higher the bonus you will receive.

These on the job training policies change depending on the supply and demand of work and drivers. Getting your foot in the door for one of these jobs will be easier during a busy year. There’s also more opportunity just before the busiest season in the fall. Spring breakup may not be the best time to look when things are slowing down. Companies can choose from a more experienced driver pool in times when people are out of work.

Keep in mind there is a training lag time to account for. Well organized companies may start hiring and training during slower times so they’re more prepared for when the busy season starts.

Continue reading Oilfield Jobs

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.

Are you ready to move on to Truck Driving Salaries?