Off road trucking in the oil and gas industry can be fun, challenging, and financially rewarding. This section of our Oilfield trucking series is where we’ll cover the different types of oilfield driving jobs you could choose from.
For those of you that just landed on this page, this is Section 5 of our series on Oilfield Trucking. A comprehensive look at all the things you should know if you’re considering a career in this field.
There’s a lot to know about driving in the oilfield, so hopefully this section will give you some direction on what job will suit you.
The oilfield Lease
The resources required to drill a well and put it into production are huge and this means many different types of trucking jobs. It starts with clearing land and building the roads and leases, and ends with oil and gas flowing from the well. It would be impossible to compile this list of off road trucking jobs without missing something, or someone, but I’ll do my best to cover as much as I can.
If you missed it in one of our previous articles, here is a great video to explain the overall process of drilling and fracturing.
What is an Oilfield Lease?
An “Oilfield Lease” is the area of land occupied by the oil company for the purpose of drilling, servicing and producing oil or gas. This is where you’ll travel to find the drilling rig, the fracturing service company, and everyone else involved in the process when off road trucking in the oilfields.
Think of it as being similar to a “right of way” for power transmission lines. They don’t have to physically own the land to use it. Hence the word lease.
The oil companies divide their work into two main segments after testing is done and before the production stage. There are trucking opportunities that exist in both of these segments. Some off road trucking companies have equipment that will service both of these divisions. These segments are Drilling and Completions.
Drilling
After all the seismic testing (Subsurface imaging) and geological assessments have determined where you’re going to put a hole, the roads and leases are built to accommodate drilling rigs. This is the first major part of the process to bring a well into production.
Off Road Trucking jobs in the oil and gas industry offer so many options of the type of work you want to do.
There’s lots of different jobs to choose from even before the rig is brought in like clearing, logging and road building. Next, rig movers bring in the rig and set it up with flat deck and crane work. Once it’s set up, they’ll need products to service it like fluids, drilling products, and other materials. There will be “Drill Cuttings” produced that will need to be hauled away to special landfill sites using end dump trailers.
So here is a short list of some of the off road trucking jobs associated with drilling. Don’t forget the work that goes into clearing lands and setting up camps to house workers in remote areas.
- Logging
- Bed truck and winch truck drivers
- Rig shack and camp shack hauling
- Rig movers
- Pipe haulers
- Cranes and picker trucks
- Heavy equipment haulers, road builders, road graders, and equipment operators
- Cementing crews from service companies
- Fluid haulers – water, drilling fluids, oil, fuel, propane, etc.
- End dump truck driving jobs
- Storage tank haulers
- Rig mat hauling
- Grocery trucks for rig camps
Some truck drivers may also have tickets to operate heavy equipment. If you’re looking for an opportunity to get out of that seat for a while, you may want to consider working for one of the many oilfield construction companies. Building the leases and roads can provide very steady high paying jobs.
Off Road Trucking. For those of you with heavy equipment tickets, you can also consider work building the oilfield leases and roads.
