Career Deep Dive #3: Oil Rig Floor Hand
These dudes are rolling in gold. Literally. They do what most wouldn't even try to do. And maybe for good reason. Its dangerous, its nonstop, and doesn't give a shit about your feelings. Lets put it this way, if Oil rigging was a super hero it would undoubtedly be Batman. It works at all hours of the night, depends on insanely expensive gadgets, always covered in black, and isn't cut out for everyone.
Without further ado I present to you Oil Rig Floorhand: Hunter Williams
Ben: Hey man hows it goin? Where do you live at?
Hunter: Watford City, North Dakota.
Okay. Gotcha. So what do you do what do you do for a living?
Hunter: Right now I'm just running a pallet business. I was able to work it up to the point to where I didn't have to still work on the rig. So right now I'm just working on that. Got off the rig about two months ago.
Damn. That's awesome dude. What were you doing on the rig and, how long did you do that for?
Hunter: On the drilling rig, I was a floor hand. And so all your duties really are, is just making connections. So it's just putting a piece of drill pipe on another piece that's already down in the hole. Doing that and running the ST80 the ST80 torques the drill pipe to about 30,000 pounds.
If you're not making connections and you're not tripping pipe, which means tripping in or outta the hole, it's pretty fast when you're tripping. Cuz it's just, it, you're always on that s t 80 you gotta push this pipe back. So I'll just explain to you how it works.
A connection. So the pipe's coming out right? We're pulling it up with the elevators, the blocks top, drive, all that. That's what pulls everything up is the blocks and top drive. Okay. And, We will set the slips. The slips go inside of this hole that is that drill pipe's inside of this hole, and it's concaved inward.
So when you throw the slips in there, what those do is they have dyes that bite that drill pipe, and then the driller will set that pipe down and all that way to that drill pipe will sit inside of those slips. And that's when you can break the connection so that the pipe can come out.
Yeah, So then you'll break the connection, you'll spin it all the way out. The driller will pull up So when he pulls up, that pipe comes up and you gotta push this. It's heavy pipe, man. You gotta push it with your whole body.
I'm sorry if I'm saying words that don't make sense
You know what? No the only one that I didn't know was the ST 80. What, is that?
Hunter: So the ST80 is what we use to torque the pipe. Basically, it's got dyes in there and it'll grab that drill pipe and spin it on there and get it tight to about 30,000 pounds so that there's no leaks, and then it's tight.
So I YouTubed it today and I was looking at it and really trying to get the nomenclature of it down of what you were saying, cuz you work on either a work over rig and a regular drilling rig correct? And the, point of the work over rig is what? That its more mobile so they could just pick up and go?
Hunter: Yeah, so the drilling rigs can do that too. It's just a lot slower paced when you're doing it on a drilling rig. So how they used to move these big drilling rigs back in the days they would pull it by trucks. But now they got these hydraulic stompers is what they're called. And all they are is they lift the rig up and they're on hydraulic rams and they'll move forward about three feet at a time.
So now that's how you move the rig on location. If you're changing sites, so typically we drill about six or seven wells on a pad, and then we would have to rig everything down, take the whole rig apart haul it off on semi-trucks.
Then they gotta frack it after that. Meaning they're gonna come in basically with something they call a gun. I'm not too familiar with fracking, but, pump down this device. And what that device does is it basically just puts perforations in the formation down hole. The formation is where all that oil is at. And what these perforations do is they just put holes in that pipe so that, oil can start coming up.
Then the work over rigs. It's basically just working on wells that need fixed. So it's way lighter on a work over rig. All it is on a work over rig is just fixing wells, whether it's parted rods. What the rods do is they hold onto the pump that's down hole and the rods are what actually pumping it back up.
I'm not sure if you've seen a a unit, like an oil unit like a grasshopper unit. Whats connected to the the rods essentially, they call it a polish rod at the top, but then below that Polish rod, it's about, I don't know, 25 feet. Below that is where the rods are, and those go all the way down hole.
So the work over rig is mainly just to, just so I get this right, it's mainly just to pull and check for any broken rods?
Hunter: So we trip out the rods and we trip out the tubing, and then from there we can see if the pump that's down hole is messed up. And if it's messed up we just get a new one sent out to us and then we put that new pump in there, send the rods down hole, the tubing in first, and then put the rods.
Right on, So how many guys do you have on a crew?
Hunter: On the drilling rig, you usually got a derrick hand, a motorman two or three floor hands, and then a driller, and then you'll have a solids control hand, which is usually third party. It's usually not somebody working directly with your company.
Then you got the pusher And then you got a company, man, the company man make about like 2,500 bucks a day.
Oh, damn. What the hell's their job?
Hunter: So they just oversee the whole operation. They call all the shots.
They work for the big oil companies like InterPlus. So I worked for True Drill and InterPlus would pay True Drill to drill their wells. So InterPlus had their own consultant, which is also called a company man who would run those jobs so that they can make sure that their wells are being drilled the way that they need 'em.
So they make very good money and they also do the 14 and 14 rotation. But I think they are contracted I think.
Since you touched on it, is that standard? 14 on 14 off?
Hunter: So typically when you're on a drilling rig it will be 14 days on and 14 days off.
Sometimes there's companies that are 20 days on and 10 days off, but that's usually the only two rotations that I've ever heard of on a drilling rig.
So for the 14 straight did you live near it or did you have to travel everyday?
Hunter So it really depended for me personally, cuz everybody else that was on my crew was from a different state and that's typically how it is. People will just take a day or two to travel to the rig when it's time to go to work and then they might spend 24 hours driving just to get to the rig, but they're getting still 10 days off after they count their driving.
They stay at the man camps, it depends on the company and the man camps are just basically the little huts. They got a bed, a bathroom, a shower, just your essentials really. It depends on the company that the man camps can either be like at the rig to where you don't gotta travel at all or they can be an hour away from the rig.
So did they pay you per diem for that?
Hunter: We used to get a hundred dollars a day per diem when we were making 26 an hour. And that's just so you can of pay for your food, pay for gas, whatever you need. It's just an extra incentive, really. Then we got a raise, a $10 raise to 36 an hour, and they dropped our per diem to 60 a day. .
Tell you what, anybody that's wanting to come out here and work in the oil field and they've never heard personal stories., It's way different than any other industry I have ever heard about, worked in, or been around.
It can be ruthless, like just the people out there can be ruthless, the machinery out there can be ruthless. It doesn't care about you. Your feelings. There's a lot of things out here that you would see and you'd be like, no way that's legal. The people can be crazy. I don't know, man. It gets real. They, call it Western. "Oh, you work for a western company." That means that they don't quite care for your feelings. Like it's just, you're here for the money. So Yeah.
It's Hey man, you guys wanna make money? We wanna make money. This is of what we gotta do. So, what would you say are some of the downsides?
Hunter: Definitely the time away from your family, if you're out of state and you're staying at the man camps, like even if you're local and you have to stay at the man camps, just cuz it might be too far of a drive, just the time away from your family. And it, it gets boring while you're out there just going to work and going home back to the man camps.
At least that's, a major con. Other than that, if you're like too soft, it's not for you. If you can't take criticism. People being real like it's probably not for you. I deal with it because I like the money out here, but I also like the job too, just knowing that I'm working around the heavy equipment.
Going into the pros how much were you making from when you started to when, you just got out of it?
Hunter: So when I first started, when we were making 26 an hour, I was a floor hand the whole time that I worked on a drilling rig.
I was there for about nine months. And when I started it was 26 an hour, a hundred dollars a day per diem. It added up to about 34 bucks an hour, I'd say after the 12 hour day. Then you were getting bonuses that are paid by InterPlus.
It's just whoever your company that is drilling, whoever they're out for, they will pay well bonuses if you can get those wells drilled in a specific time. Me, I was making about, I'd say $6,000 a month on my two weeks when I first started and then after our raise of $36 an hour, it was about 7,500 a month after taxes for those two weeks.
$7,500 a month after taxes? Geez, man. That's, fantastic money, right?
Hunter: Yeah. My derek hand said that back in 2012, which is when the boom was really happening out here, he said he was still doing his two weeks on, two weeks off schedule, and he was making, I think he said he made $168,000 after taxes doing two weeks on, two weeks off. The reason he said that he was making so much is because of those well bonuses that they were making. Oh. I guess the well bonuses that they were getting were more than their paychecks from their company!
Wow, so how does retirement look for you? What are your thoughts on that?
Hunter: So I, I don't quite believe in the whole work a job for your whole life and then go collect your 401k. But I do put a little bit in 401ks, but I'm really just focusing on entrepreneurship for retirement. Whether it's owning businesses and getting into real estate and flipping houses. I'm actually looking into trading flipping pallets for flipping houses here soon, just cuz I think I would make more money.
But there's companies out here that give you good retirement benefits if you stay with them. Of course. But it's, just not for me.
What does a day on the rig look like?
Hunter: On a drilling rig. I, the drilling rig I was on, we started at six o'clock. We would have a safety meeting at five. So we'd get paid for that safety meeting. We'd just sit down, talk about what we're gonna be doing for the day.
And then we would go up to the rig and we would make our relief. And that just means swapping out with the people that are doing night shift or day shift, depending whatever shift you're working at the time, and you just swap out with them. Get to ask him questions if there was anything that went wrong, anything people should know.
And then just always be looking up at the rig when you're on a drilling rig, cuz you gotta be paying attention to where that pipe's at. You gotta make sure you're up there for a connection cuz you can't just rely on other people to tell you, "Hey, you gotta go up there and make connection."
You gotta be looking up every five minutes. But if you're not making connections and you're not tripping pipe, you're cleaning the rig with a pressure washer and a scrub brush in your hand, all day.
Your breaks are when you're going to the bathroom, really you don't get certified lunch breaks. It's, whenever you get a chance, you get a sandwich and hurry up and eat it while you're working. And all day you gotta be working. It can get pretty hard when you're not used to that, but About 12 and a half hours is what I would get on a drilling rig and on the work over rigs, when I first started, I was banking about 18 hours a day for three months straight.
Work over rig, you have a chance to sit down. Typically, you guys will get a lunch. It's not at a specific time, but it's just whenever the person that's in charge says "We got a few minutes, we can go take a lunch" and we'll go eat for 20 minutes or something, head back out and work for the rest of the day.
But on a work over rig, you'll get a little bit of time here and there. I'd say maybe an hour a day of, just chilling out and sitting down. That's if you're waiting on other people, like third party people to bring something out. You don't gotta be cleaning the work over rigs all the time like you are on a drilling rig, cuz there's just not as much to clean on a work over rig.
Well I really appreciate you coming on here man. I think this has been incredibly informative and will help a lot of people out.
Hunter: Absolutely thanks for having me on!
