A pickup and a gooseneck, moving what somebody needs on location right now. It is the lowest bar of any oilfield driving seat and the easiest one to get into...and the job title gets stuck on postings that are not hotshot at all. Here is how to tell.
| Company | Where | Posted pay | What the description says |
|---|---|---|---|
| JLC | Arnegard | $28–30/hr | Pickup and gooseneck · home nightly · cross trains winch and slick |
Five North Dakota postings titled hotshot printed a wage. We opened them. Only this one describes hotshot work. See the section below for what the others turned out to be.
That is the band we see for a straight hotshot seat in the Bakken. It is our judgment from working this basin, not a wage we can point you at. The one posting we verified sits at the top of it, which is about what you would expect from an outfit that also cross trains you onto bigger trucks.
This is the most useful thing on this page, so it goes first. Of the five North Dakota postings titled hotshot that printed a wage, we read them and found:
So if you are searching hotshot because you want a pickup and gooseneck job, read the duties before you get excited about a number. A high hotshot rate usually means it is not a hotshot job.
Somebody on a location needs a part, a fitting, a pump or a piece of equipment, and they need it today. You go get it and you take it there.
It is the least physical of the oilfield driving seats and the most reactive. You are not running a set route, you are answering what broke.
Hotshot pays less than winch, less than hydrovac and a lot less than crude. What it has is the lowest bar and the best exit.
The one verified posting on this page offers cross training onto winch and slick deck right in the ad, and it is home every night with 100 percent paid medical and dental. That is the pattern worth chasing...get in on the pickup, learn the roads and the pads, then get moved onto heavier equipment on the company's time instead of paying for it yourself.
Ask about cross training in the interview. It is the whole reason to take a hotshot seat over a better paying one somewhere else.
Watch the pay structure too. Some hotshot work is paid a percentage of the load rather than hourly, and a percentage is not comparable to an hourly rate. Ask what an average week actually paid the last person in the seat.
Hotshot is one of the easier oilfield driving seats to start in, and the ladder out of it is real. If you are not carded at all yet, swamping is the other way in.
How Swampers Get Into A Truck →We found five North Dakota postings titled hotshot that printed a wage, opened all five, and found that only one of them describes hotshot work. That posting is in the table with the company and town attached.
One verified posting is not a wage range, so the $25–30 band is our own read, boxed and labelled. Where a role is too thin to source properly, we tell you what we think it pays from working this basin rather than leaving you with nothing. If a figure is not in that amber box, an employer printed it and their name is next to it.
We report what a company posted. We do not grade it. Naming what those other four postings actually describe is not a criticism of them...they are real jobs, some of them better paying than hotshot. It is just that the title will not tell you which one you are applying for.
No estimated or modeled salaries appear here.
We read the descriptions and tell you what the job actually is, not what the title says. Free, every week.
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