The Life of a Roughneck

Working in Alberta’s oil field is not easy, the work is manual, the days are long, there are no vacations, the winters are very cold, and the summers are very hot. Working as a roughneck on an oil rig in Alberta’s oil field is doubly hard. Before you take on the job you should be aware of what it entails.

The roughneck on the crew is the low man on the totem pole so to speak, and is often treated like such from the rest of the crew members. The roughneck is the person on the crew that is responsible for doing all of the “menial” tasks like taking out the garbage, fueling the vehicles, cleaning the tools, making coffee, etcetera, etcetera.

The roughneck should be the first person out of the shack in the morning ready to work and should be the last person in the crew truck ready to go home. A roughnecks job isn’t easy in Alberta’s oil industry but the job pays very well and there is lots of room for advancement, so if you can stick it out for a while you will undoubtedly move on to a better position on the crew.