Everybody out here has one.
The job you walked off location swearing you were done with, and the one you warn every new hand about.
And half the time, you ended up doing it again the next hitch.
The Classics
- Nippling up the BOP under the floor, soaked, beating on hammer wrenches in a spot you can barely turn around in
- Shoveling out a mud tank on a drilling rig. It's never as empty as they told you, and you're wearing it home
- Cleaning out frac tanks. Enough said
- Digging a line by hand because the hydrovac never showed, with the whole crew standing around watching you do it
- Getting a crude truck in and out of a lease road that turned to gumbo overnight. The ruts from the truck before you are deeper than your tires
- Swamping for a driver who didn't say 10 words in 14 hours. You learned more about his radio station than about the job
Every Side Of The Field Has One
- Racking pipe in the derrick with the wind howling, when every stand feels like it wants to take you with it
- A night on the sand crew. You're blowing sand out of your ears, your truck and your lunchbox for a week
- Swabbing a well from daylight to dark, running that sand line down and back up until you lose count of the runs
- Standing in the snubbing basket in January with nothing between you and the wind
- 30 hours on a pad waiting on frac to be ready for the wireline truck, then going nonstop once they finally are
- Sitting flowback all night, watching a choke and a gauge and fighting to keep your eyes open
- Thawing a frozen line at 2am on a hot oil truck while everybody else waits in their pickups with the heat on
- A hydrovac dig where the line wasn't anywhere near where anybody said it was
- The roustabout day where you did 4 other crews' jobs before lunch, and then got asked to do a 5th
- Chaining down a rig move in the wind with the straps popping
Every one of those jobs is still somebody's paycheck. Respect to the hands still doing them.
Who's Hiring
If you're looking for your next one, the latest board is up, including seats that need no CDL.
Field Report
Drop the one job you swore you'd never do again and whether you ended up doing it anyway.