Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/71813
Fuel's gold as Schneider National. The large truckload company is hiring in Texas, especially, but also around North Dakota/Montana and in Pennsylvania, says Recruiting Vice President Mike Hinz. For now, it's only company drivers, but "we're looking at the potential for owner- operators," he says. "An average guy with average experience [whatever the application] can expect $60,000 minimum his first year," says Hinz, "depending on how long he wants to work." Pay in many cases is salaried, based on a five-day workweek. With bonuses for extra workdays, it could run as high as $90,000. Former team over-the-road owner-operators Kristin and Chris Stump joined Schneider as company drivers in February in separate 2012 Freightliner Cascadia daycabs. They mostly haul sand in pneumatic tanks to gas well sites in West Virginia. "It's more money," Kristin says, and "it's a lot more stable." Hauls are short, meaning easy home time. The Stumps moved to Pittsburgh to join the operation. New drilling technologies and energy prices are driving the production boom. "As they bring new wells on, they'll truck them until they can get them pipelined out to a common point facility," Lessley says of crude coming out of the Texas wells. "We go out there and service the wells and keep the liquids moving off of them." One type of liquid is condensate from natural gas, the byproduct of running the "wet gas" through a separator before it's piped. The other is somewhat heavier crude oil. Hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling technology, combined with seismic devices that can better pinpoint where the oil and gas are, give drillers the ability to reanimate old, slow-producing wells, Lessley says. Many existing wells can see production increased from 20 or 30 barrels a day to 130 to 180 barrels a day, he adds. The Stumps are working the Marcellus Shale, where fracking has sent gas activity into boom mode through Pennsylvania and parts of Ohio and West Virginia. Owner- operator Mike Mace and the team of Steve and Doris Bixler also haul frack sand in pneumatic tanks to the area. Years of unsatisfying work toting reefers and flatbeds left Mace on the verge of selling his 1996 International 9300 and exiting trucking. Then Mace leased to Reed Trucking of Schuylkill Haven, Pa., in 2010. Now, running sand regionally, "I absolutely love trucking again," he says. A large part of that is driver camaraderie. "It's like you're on the Platform/dry van opportunities Hydraulic fracturing is a materials- and waste- heavy process, one reason truck demand and rates have been so high for those working the wells with dry and liquid bulk tanks. Some dry van haulers as well as flatbedders have taken advantage of similar opportunities. Landstar- leased Tim Philmon, for instance, hauled the pump pictured below on his flatbed out of a Montana oil field in May, after carrying in fracking fluid packaged in totes. Empty totes have to be carried back out, too, notes Brenda Hoover of MicBee Transportation, a Landstar agent based in Cogan Station, Penn. At sites around the nation, Hoover notes, "I arrange about a load a week of them, at better than average van lane rates." Backhauls don't always work out so well for Philmon when bringing totes in. He had to deadhead all the way to Kansas to get a decent load the last time he went into the fields. Rates he's seen for liquid in totes coming out of Texas to North Dakota and Montana fell by $1,300 to the truck (from around $5,000), or as much as a buck a mile, between February and May, too, he says. "I'm usually hauling about 18 totes at a time," he says. Philmon guesses the supply of trucks willing to take it north falls sharply when temps are reaching 30 below. "All there is to do up there is work. It's not Owner-operator Tim Philmon has run brand-new Caterpillar pumping engines to energy sites in Oklahoma and Texas, as well as in the Northwest, on his flatbed. "They can't build those $250,000 units fast enough," he says. pretty," he says. The area is "lacking in truck stops," Philmon adds. All the same, it's brimming with local opportunity in oil and gas services. "If you want to go up there and drive a truck, you can really make a killing running sand and oil tankers," says Florida-based Philmon. "If I didn't have a family, I'd go up there in a heartbeat." 34 OVERDRIVE JULY 2012