Slick Truck & Flatbed Jobs In North Dakota

Why You Cannot Find These Jobs

We searched North Dakota for slick truck postings. One result came back, and it was a hotshot ad that only mentions slick deck in a line about cross training.

The seats are out there. They just get titled something else:

• CDL Driver or Class A Driver, with the truck named nowhere in the title
• Rig mover, when the work is moving equipment between locations
• Pipe hauling or flatbed, when that is what is riding on the deck
• Bundled into a winch and slick ad, where one posting covers two trucks

So searching by job title will not find this work. You have to read the duties and figure out what you would actually be driving.

Slick, Winch And Hotshot Are Three Different Jobs

They get advertised together constantly, so it is worth being clear about what separates them. Different truck, different skillset, different money.

• Slick truck. A semi pulling a flat deck trailer, with no winch and no poles on it. Flatbed or stepdeck...same job, different trailer. You load, secure and haul equipment, pipe and materials, and because there is no winch the load gets set on by somebody else...a loader, a telehandler, a forklift or a crane...or it gets driven on. The skill is load securement and getting a loaded deck into an ugly location.
• Winch truck. A bed truck with a winch and poles. You are pulling and dragging loads onto the deck under power, and rigging. That is work a slick deck physically cannot do, which is the whole difference between the two. It is the heaviest skill of the three and it pays the most.
• Hotshot. A pickup and a gooseneck moving smaller freight on demand.

Nobody who runs both pays them the same. If you take a job off a combined ad, find out which truck you are assigned to before you agree to a number.

The Question To Ask On A Combined Ad

When one posting says winch and slick, or offers a rate starting at some figure, ask two things.

• Which truck am I on? Not which truck might I be on eventually. Which one on day one.
• What does the other truck pay? If they will not tell you, you have learned something.

A floor figure on a two seat ad is the bottom of a range that covers both jobs. It is not what either job pays.

The Way Up

Slick is often the middle rung rather than the destination.

One Arnegard outfit advertises cross training onto winch and slick deck directly in its hotshot ad. That is the ladder in plain sight...pickup and gooseneck, then a deck, then a winch truck. Winch pays the most of the three, so that is the direction to push.

Ask about cross training in the interview. A company that offers it is telling you they mean to keep you, and it is the cheapest way to move up in trucking out here...you learn on their equipment on their time.

You Do Not Load Yourself

This is the practical difference between a slick deck and a winch truck, and it changes how your day runs.

A winch truck operator can pull his own load on. On a slick deck you are waiting on iron...a loader, a telehandler, a forklift or a crane, run by somebody else. That means your day is tied to whoever is operating it and whether they show up when they said they would.

It also points at the obvious way to make yourself worth more. A driver who can climb off and run the telehandler or the forklift himself is not standing around, and that shows up on postings across this basin as preferred experience...telehandlers, skid steers, forklifts and man lifts get named directly. Get seat time on them wherever you can.

What They Ask For

• Class A CDL and a clean driving record
• Load securement you can demonstrate. Chains, binders, straps, tarps
• Oilfield experience preferred on most of these, though hotshot and flat deck seats are among the more forgiving entry points for a carded driver
• DOT medical card and a drug screen
• Equipment time is a plus. Loader, telehandler, forklift and man lift experience shows up as preferred on plenty of these
• No tanker endorsement. If a posting demands tanker, you are looking at a liquid haul seat, not a deck

Where These Numbers Come From

The two figures in the table came off real North Dakota postings with the company and town attached. Only one of them belongs cleanly to a slick seat, which is why we did not build a sourced range out of them.

The $28–35 band is our own read, boxed and labelled as such. Where a role is too thin to source properly, we will sometimes tell you what we think it pays based on working this basin, rather than leave 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.

No estimated or modeled salaries appear here. Job sites will show you a confident number for this role. It is generated, not gathered.

Common Questions