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The roughneck
By Tina Griego
I'm a tool pusher. I don't know why it's called that, but that's what I am. I manage the guys on the rig, keep them in supplies, help them get the next location ready. I have 16 people working for me. I guess we're like the last of the Mohicans as far as oil rigs go. There's not many of us left. I just got into to it because my friends were doing it, and I always thought it looked neat. We work 12-hour shifts. Three days on and three days off. Four people per shift. There's the worm, the chain man, the derrick man and the guy running the rig, the driller. He's the guy directly under me. Everybody starts out as worm. From the worm's corner, you go to chain man to derrick man to driller. I've been pushing tools for six years, and I'll probably stay at it for who knows how long. It took me 10 years just to get to driller. There's just a lot of stuff to learn. In '93, '94, '95, things were pretty good. There were about 30 rigs. There was a lot more money to be made then. Right now, the roughneck makes about $30,000. The driller makes about $40,000. So it's not a bad paying scale, but we've been at that scale since we've been out here, and there's only two of us running now. It's not good, and I don't really think it can come back again. The roughnecks, they're finding other things to do. Can you imagine the frustration after 20 years to have to do something else? I've never done anything else. The problem is that commodities aren't worth anything. The price of crude controls our drilling, and it's been in the dumps for the last year, year and a half. But you know, that's the story of oil. It's up and down and you go with it. We always say this is the kind of work that separates the men from the boys. It's real manual labor, real demanding. It's hard to find people who are willing to do it, but the ones that are willing really like it. I like the physical work. It just takes a brawny, gritty type of person. You either love it or hate it, and if you stay, it gets in your blood. The worm out there now is my son. He didn't want to go to school so I figured bringing him here and giving him a good dose of slave labor would send him running back to school. I didn't finish high school, so you can see why I would want him to finish. But he liked it. He's been out here four months. Our whole goal is for us to survive and to do that we got to be real competitive, so everything moves very, very fast. The fewer hours I spend on the hole, the cheaper it is. These guys out here now will start at 7 a.m. and end at 7 p.m., and they don't stop. They don't have a lunch break. They come in and grab a couple bites and go back out. We don't stop for nothing. It could be 60 degrees below and a blizzard and we're out there. The only thing we have left when we're gone is the hole and it's gotta be straight. July 25, 1999
Colorado Millennium 2000
is a yearlong project by the Denver
Rocky Mountain News, NEWS4
and the Colorado Historical Society |
