The best money a CDL will get you in this basin without leaving home at night. It also has the hardest gate to get through, and a pay structure that looks simpler on the ad than it is on the check.
| Company | Where | Posted pay | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hofmann Trucking | Tioga | $90,000–135,000/yr | Paid by percentage of load · 2 yrs Class A · oil hauling experience in ND, MT or WY |
| Badlands Tank Lines | Alexander, Killdeer, Williston, Stanley, Grenora | $500–600/day average | Home nightly · company paid housing for non-locals · manual or automatic |
| WISCO Trucking (WTI) | Stanley | $30–35/hr | $2,500 a week average with overtime · 1 yr crude preferred · $2,000 sign on |
| Black Hills Trucking | Williston, Watford City | Not posted | Class A with hazmat · no wage in the ad |
| Energy Transfer | Watford City | Not posted | Paid per barrel and per mile · $1,000 a month housing allowance |
These 5 driver seats were confirmed still up on September 27. A sixth, read in August, printed the same $500–600 a day and still counts toward the ranges, unnamed.
| Company | Where | Posted pay | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| ITL Tanklines | Stanley | $75,000–200,000/yr gross | Your truck · wet kit required |
| WISCO Trucking (WTI) | Williston | Not posted | Your truck and your own 407 hazmat trailer |
Owner operator figures are gross. Fuel and equipment come out of them, so they do not compare to a driver's wage.
One of these postings describes its figure as an average day pay, and its own fine print says the rate is illustrative and that actual pay depends on hours worked.
That is not a trick. It is how day rate crude work actually functions. A day where the well is slow, the line is backed up, or the weather stops you is not the same day as a clean one. The number on the ad is what a normal day looks like, not a guarantee attached to showing up.
The same posting also ties its sign on bonus to verified crude experience, and says that in some cases drivers who cannot verify it are not eligible for a sign on or referral bonus. If you are coming from another kind of hauling, ask about that before you count the bonus as money.
A Tioga outfit prints $90,000–135,000 a year on a seat paid by percentage of load. One Stanley seat prints $30–35 an hour with a $2,500 weekly average, hourly plus overtime.
One posting says it straight, and it is the most honest line we have read on any listing in this basin:
Willingness and ability to work outdoors sampling and transferring oil for an hour or more at origins and destinations in all weather conditions
That is the job. You are not just driving. At every load and every drop you are outside, gauging and sampling and hooking up, for an hour or more each end. In January. In the wind.
Anybody who tells you crude hauling is a driving job has not done it. It is an outdoor job with driving in between, and that is exactly why it pays what it pays.
This is the tightest gate of any driving seat in the basin. From the postings still up:
Day rate is only part of the check. Things the seats still posted pay on top:
When you compare two crude offers, compare these, not the headline day rate. Two outfits at $550 a day are not paying the same if one pays wait time and the other does not.
One of these companies puts home nightly in the first line of its ad, and it deserves the emphasis.
Crude hauling in the Bakken is mostly local work. You are running between well sites and terminals inside a defined area, not living out of a truck across three states. Not every seat runs that way...one Tioga outfit runs regional lanes in North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming...so ask. For money in this range, home every night is rare. Most jobs that pay like this out here cost you either your nights, your weeks, or your body.
If you have a family in this basin, that is the argument for this seat over almost anything else a Class A opens up.
Crude wants hazmat, usually tanker, and often two years of Class A. If you are short of that, the way in is a truck seat that does not require both...winch, flat deck or vac...and build the time while you get the endorsements.
See Winch & Heavy Haul →Eight North Dakota crude hauling postings, every one opened and read in full, in August and September 2026. On September 27 we checked the August ones again and read the new ones: seven were confirmed still up, and those are named with company and town next to each number. A posting we could not find still up counts toward the ranges for 6 months from the last day we saw it, but it loses its name. Owner operator figures are printed as posted, labelled gross, and kept out of every range.
We report what a company posted. We do not grade it. Where a posting qualifies its own number...calling it an average, or tying a bonus to verified experience...we tell you that too, because that is the part people miss.
No estimated or modeled salaries appear here. Job sites generate their own guesses for this role and they are not real numbers.
The postings behind this page were read in August 2026, and the newer ones in September 2026. The figures here are a reading from those months, not a promise of what any company pays today.
Government baseline for context: BLS puts heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers at a national median of $57,440/yr and mean of $58,240/yr (May 2024, OEWS). That is every truck driver in the country in every trailer type, which is why a Bakken crude number looks nothing like it.
We post a fresh North Dakota board every week, and we read the descriptions so you do not have to. Free.
Every one of these is a real seat in this basin, paying what the company said it pays. Never worked the patch before? Start with how to get an oilfield job with no experience, or with oilfield jobs with a felony if that is the question in your way.
Work one of these seats? Tell us what you actually make. Your name, email and company are never published, and nothing goes public until a seat has 5 reports behind it.