Jack of all trades. It is how most hands get on a location in this basin with no CDL and no experience, and it is a job plenty of guys have made a whole career out of. Here is what it actually pays at every rung, what the work really is, and what gets a green hand run off before his first hitch is over.
| Company | Where | Posted pay |
|---|---|---|
| Murex Petroleum | Alexander | $28–30/hr, permanent |
| Well Oiled Solutions | Williston | Pusher, $28–38/hr |
| Badlands Energy Services | Watford City | Foreman, $35–42/hr |
| Ironworks Welding | Dickinson | $24–29/hr |
| B&G crew pushers | Williston | Up to $38/hr |
| B&G Oilfield Services | Williston | Up to $26/hr |
| James Oilwell Service | Belfield | $22–25/hr |
| B&G Roustabout Service | Williston | $22–24/hr |
| B&G Technician Trainee | Williston | No experience, $22–24/hr |
| Asgard | Williston / Bainville | General labor, $20–30/hr |
| Shanco LLC | Williston | Roustabout Hand, from $18/hr |
11 of the 13 postings printed an actual dollar figure. The other 2 (Delta Constructors, Sideworx Connect) listed the seat without a number. We do not average them in and we do not guess at them.
Roustabout is the catch-all seat on a location. If it needs digging, carrying, building, bolting or fixing, that is your day.
People call it unskilled because it takes anybody with no experience. That is only true for about a month. A hand who has been at it a few years runs a skid steer and a telehandler, rigs loads, cuts and fits pipe, preps for the welder, and knows a tank battery well enough to build one. There is no ticket 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 guys 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...tank batteries, water disposal sites, treaters, flares, flowlines and pumping units. It is steady, it is usually local, and one Alexander operator runs it as a permanent non-rotational seat at $28–30/hr. The other version works on and around a drilling rig and is mostly third party now.
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.
No. Not at any rung of it.
A clean driving record and a valid license is the bar on most of these. 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 still be at $28–30/hr inside a couple of years, or $35–42 running a crew.
A Class A does open doors sideways. Some roustabout outfits will move you onto a water or vac truck once you are carded, and a few will pay for the school. But you are not stuck without one, and that is the difference between this and almost every other job on the board.
One Alexander operator lists relief pumper duties right in the roustabout job description...learning routes and covering for the pumper. That is not filler. That is the sideways move onto the production side, and it is how a lot of lease operators and pumpers in this basin actually got started.
Almost none of it is skill. Nobody expects you to know anything. Here is what actually ends it.
Show up early, keep your hands moving, and say you do not know when you do not know. That is genuinely most of it for the first hitch.
None of these are required to apply for a roustabout seat, and no honest company will make you buy them up front. Most outfits put you through theirs. You will see these asked about on applications:
If a listing asks you to pay for a ticket before they will talk to you, that is a bad sign. Real companies eat that cost.
Roustabout will take you with nothing. But showing up knowing how a location works, what the money actually looks like after taxes and camp, and what not to say in an interview is the difference between lasting a hitch and lasting a career.
Green Hand is our beginner course. Lesson one is free and covers the money rule that catches most new hands out.
Start Lesson 1 Free →Every figure on this page came off a real job posting for a real North Dakota location between March and August 2026. We list the company and the town next to the number so you can check us. Estimated or modeled salary figures from job sites are excluded on purpose...if a number was not printed by the employer, it is not here.
We do not blend Bakken with Permian, onshore with offshore, or North Dakota with Texas. That is what makes most oilfield salary pages useless. A roustabout number that averages Williston and Midland into one figure describes nowhere.
Eleven of these thirteen printed a dollar figure and only those eleven count.
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, which is exactly why we count postings instead.
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