Roustabout Jobs In North Dakota

A Low Number Does Not Always Mean An Entry Seat

Three postings we read in August make the point.

One ad asked for previous experience and paid from $18. Another company started hands with no experience at all at $20, and a third listed experience as preferred rather than required in an $18–22 seat.

So the cheapest seat on the board is not the one that will take a green hand. Read the requirements before you read the wage.

What The Job Actually Is

Roustabout is the catch-all seat on a location. If it needs digging, carrying, building, bolting or fixing, that is your day.

People write it off because it takes anybody with no experience. That lasts about a month. Here is what the employers behind these numbers actually wrote into their own job descriptions:

• Design, fit and assemble threaded, grooved and flanged piping, and stainless steel tubing
• Work on and around pressurized vessels and piping systems
• Set pumping units, tank batteries, separators and treaters
• Operate backhoes, skid steers, telehandlers, trackhoes and man lifts
• Pour and set concrete pads, stands and vessel bases
• Wellhead tie-ins, and cleaning tanks and vessels out
• Assemble and repair flow lines and discharge lines, and plumb the whole thing
• Rig and set loads coming off a crane or hydraulic lift
• Trenching, pad leveling, fence building, barrier walls and compressor sheds

That is a pipefitter who never got a ticket. There is no card at the end of it, which is why it gets written off. It is still a trade in every way that matters on location, and plenty of hands in this basin have built a whole career on it without ever getting a CDL.

There are two versions of this job in North Dakota and it matters which one you take. The one on this page is the construction and maintenance side, working production facilities. It is usually local, often permanent, and one Alexander operator ran it home most nights at $28–30/hr.

The other version works on and around a drilling rig, and in this basin it is mostly third party now...you are employed by a service company, not the rig. It is a different life. Postings for it run rotational rather than local, hours swing with rig activity, and short notice callouts are written into the job. One we read ran two weeks on and one week off and asked for drilling rig experience up front. Some of these seats specialize further, into poly pipe install and fusion work. We are not putting a wage on the rig version, because we have not seen one posted in North Dakota to source it from.

Do not confuse this with swamper either. A swamper is the second man on a vac, hydrovac or winch truck and that job leads somewhere completely different. Swamper jobs are covered on their own page.

Where It Goes From Here

Three real exits, all of them written into the postings we read.

• Up the crew. Hand to lead hand to pusher. The pusher seats we read in August wanted two to three years of oilfield and construction work, the lead hand seat still posted wants at least two, and the man running the crew does the paperwork: one pusher seat wanted you competent in Microsoft Office, and the lead hand seat puts daily reports and invoicing on a computer right in the duties.
• Sideways into production. One Alexander operator wrote relief pumper duties directly into its roustabout job description...learning the routes and covering for the pumper. That is how a lot of lease operators in this basin actually got started.
• Into a truck. A Class A was preferred on both pusher seats we read in August, and one of them required you to get one within six months of hire.
• Onto the operator side. The one that surprises people. Hands who spend years building and maintaining facilities end up as construction and maintenance consultants and company men working for the operators themselves. Same knowledge, other side of the table.

The Exit Nobody Puts On A Job Board

Ask around this basin and you will find construction and maintenance consultants and company men who started as roustabouts. Not a handful. It is a normal career.

It makes sense once you look at what the job teaches. A hand who has spent years setting tank batteries, fitting pipe, plumbing flow lines and running facility builds knows how the work is actually done, how long it really takes, and what a contractor is telling you when he says he needs another day. That is exactly what an operator is paying a construction or maintenance consultant to know. ConocoPhillips, Chevron and Chord all operate in this basin, and somebody has to oversee the facility work they contract out.

Here is the part that matters if you are trying to plan for it: we could not find a single one of these seats posted. We searched. They do not go on job boards. They get filled through consulting firms and through people who already know your work.

Which tells you how to get there. Learn the facility side properly, do not burn bridges with the operator reps who show up on your locations, and understand that the last step of this ladder is a phone call, not an application. We are not putting a pay figure on it because nobody publishes one...but nobody takes that step down, either.

Do You Need A CDL

No. Not at any rung of it.

A valid driver's license and a clean record was the bar on the seven we read in August, and the seats still posted in September ask for no commercial license either. Only the two pusher seats we read in August mentioned a Class A, and both listed it as preferred rather than required.

That is the whole appeal. It is one of the few seats in this basin a man can walk into with no card, no experience and no school, and be at $28–30/hr inside a couple of years or $28–38 running a crew.

The Fine Print In These Postings

Things that were buried in the descriptions and matter more than the hourly rate.

• Some of these require you to already live there. Of the seats we read in August, one pusher seat asked whether you lived within 50 miles, one outfit stated plainly that relocation was not offered, and one required you to have your own housing. The Williston facility seat still posted requires you to relocate to Williston.
• Subsistence is not standard, but it exists. One posting we read in August offered hourly wage plus possible subsistence on top, and the Watford City lead hand seat still posted pays $45 a day per diem.
• Weekends are in the job description, not a surprise. Several we read in August stated outright that the position regularly required long hours and frequent weekend work.
• You will be lifting 65 to 75 pounds unassisted. Three postings put a number on it.
• Benefits are real at this level. Health, dental and vision show up on nearly all of them, and one we read in August listed a 401(k) with a 4% match.

What Gets A Green Hand Run Off In The First Week

Almost none of it is skill. Nobody expects you to know anything yet.

• Being late, or being a no-show. A crew is built around bodies showing up. Miss once and you are a risk. Miss twice and you are gone.
• Standing around when the job pauses. When the work stops, go find something. A hand who has to be told what to do every ten minutes costs the pusher more than he is worth.
• Guessing instead of asking. Nobody gets fired for asking which valve. People get fired for opening the wrong one.
• Phone out on location. Put it in the truck.
• Wearing your FR wrong. Sleeves down, snapped up, glasses on.
• Quitting mid-hitch. Leaving a crew short is the one thing this basin actually remembers.
• Failing the drug screen. Every one of the seven we read in August ran one, and several ran a background and motor vehicle check on top.

Where These Numbers Come From

Ten North Dakota roustabout postings, every one opened and read, between August and September 2026. On September 26 we checked them again: three were confirmed still up, and those are named with company and town next to the number so you can check us. 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.

We report what a company posted. We do not grade it.

No estimated or modeled salaries appear on this page. Job sites generate their own salary guesses and they are not real numbers...we checked one Williston listing where the site displayed a confident annual range while the actual posting body contained no pay at all. If an employer did not print it, it is not here.

The postings behind this page were read in September 2026 or, for the older ones, in August. The figures here are a reading from those months, not a promise of what any company pays today.

Government baseline for context: the Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the all occupations mean wage for the West North Dakota nonmetropolitan area at $29.27/hr (May 2023, OEWS). BLS does not publish a roustabout specific wage at that area level in the release we checked, and its data runs about two years behind. These postings are from this year.

Common Questions