workover rig floorhand duties for sale

May be required to work floors or operate the rig when needed. Assists in picking up or laying down tubing, manually lifting the tubing from the rack onto the…

Maintains tubing, rod tongs and hand tools on the rig. A minimum of one (1) year rig floor operation experience. Keeps pipe deck and main deck areas orderly.

Maintains tubing, rod tongs and hand tools on the rig. A minimum of one (1) year rig floor operation experience. Keeps pipe deck and main deck areas orderly.

May be required to work floors or operate the rig when needed. Assists in picking up or laying down tubing, manually lifting the tubing from the rack onto the…

Available to work to tight deadlines. Works as crew member during the actual installation/work. Other duties as directed including but not limited to driving…

Performs housekeeping around rig, keeping rig floor clean and clear of tools after each trip. Assists in drilling rig erection (rig up) and dismantling (rig…

The Floor hand is responsible for assisting in setting up and taking down of the Workover Rig and equipment, handling, sorting, and moving tools, pipe, cement, and other materials in addition to maintaining a clean and organized work environment.

Roustabouts are manual workers who are typically employed in the oil and gas drilling industries. They have varied duties to keep the oil and gas rigs run efficiently and safely. Other responsibilities include maintaining the cleanliness of drill sites, transporting and storing materials and supplies to work areas, and installing equipment. They also conduct repairs on broken pumps and other equipment and maintain tools for drilling and extraction. This role"s skills and qualifications include a high school diploma, familiarity with site safety procedures, and physical and mental stamina.

A floor hand is an employee who performs a variety of manual labor tasks in a rig site. Floor hand employees take charge of handling pipes, drilling, and casing equipment. Their responsibilities include rig component equipment repairs and maintenance, assigned activities on the rig floor, and rig up and down movements. They are considered as foundational employees working on the derrick floor. Often, they handle the tough physical jobs on the site.

Workover rigs, also called pulling unit rigs, are specialized oil rigs set up for inserting or pulling pipe tubing in and out of wells. Workover crews are called when an oil well has been drilled, is undergoing repair or is being retired, as indicated by Schlumberger.

These crews are relatively small compared to other rig crews and consist of tool pushers, operators or relief operators, derrick men and floormen or roughnecks. The average workover rig salary overall was ​$65,039​ as reported by Simply Hired in 2022. Available workover rig jobs and descriptions can be found on the Rigzone website.

The acting supervisor on a workover rig is called the tool pusher. The main task of a pusher is to hire, fire and supervise contracting work crews. When contractors have an issue on site, the first person they report concerns to is the tool pusher. Pushers need to have an intimate knowledge of how each and every part of a rig works, both individually and as an overall part of the drilling operation as a whole.

If equipment fails or needs to be reordered, the tool pusher talks with suppliers to get the right parts out on site with a minimum of downtime for the rig. The pusher is responsible for the overall safety of a rig. If the tool pusher has any safety concerns, he has the power to halt production until the concern is resolved.

The operator/relief operator is next in order of responsibility to the tool pusher on a workover rig. The main task of an operator is to control the crane and derrick that hauls pipe in and out of the bored well. In smaller crews, the operator is also the one who drives the rig truck. When laying pipe into a well, the operator directs the truck or derrick to the optimum spot next to the bore opening.

The operator then instructs the derrick hands and roughnecks where to place the bore pipe for easy access by the crane or by hand-loading methods. During a well breakdown or repair, the operator directs the crew hands in storage of extracted pipelines. Because the operators work most closely with derrick hands and roughnecks, they are typically responsible for selection and maintenance of their immediate workover rig crew.

In the pulling unit rig crew hierarchy, the derrick hands come after the operator/relief operators. The main responsibility of a derrick hand is everything that is above ground on the rig. During laying operations, derrick hands assist the operators/relief operators in inserting boring into the well. During repair or breakdown, they assist the operator in pulling pipe out of the well and storing it properly.

In between laying, derrick hands have other responsibilities as well, depending on the size of the crews. In smaller crews, Derrick hands also see to the maintenance of the rig-based electric and diesel generators necessary to power rig equipment.

At the bottom of the pulling unit rig crew in terms of seniority is the floorhand or roughneck. The main task of a roughneck is to perform any kind of tasks asked by either the derrick hand or the operator. These tasks can range from assisting with laying new pipe or removal of old tubing, general construction, to moving new equipment, such as generators. Most crew members on a work-about start their career as a floorhand or roughneck before working their way up to more senior positions.

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If you climb the concrete stairs to the top of Mustang Stadium, one of the highest points in Andrews, Texas, and look in nearly any direction, past the parking lot and asphalt loop surrounding the town, mesquite-choked fields sprawl to the limits of sight. It’s not an unusual vista in West Texas. Neither are the innumerable pumpjacks that dot the desert’s horizon. Some stand still, giant silhouettes of metal. Others dip their bulky heads to the earth like horses bending to water. At dusk, you can make out the gas flares blazing yellow and orange alongside the pumpjacks and tanks, and as night blankets the prairie, the bright lights of drilling rigs shine against the dark.

Even across the Atlantic, it was clear that there was a serious boom underway back home. I was ready to leave the classroom behind for something grittier, something that would allow me to put my hands to use on anything other than a keyboard. Oilfield work seemed a perfect opportunity to spend some time with my family—who I hadn’t seen since I boarded the plane in Houston—while whittling down my student debt and learning a new trade. I sent an email to a childhood buddy, who had become a rig supervisor in Andrews. I told him I was moving back and would be looking for a job. He said he could find one for me.

I started working for him in January 2013. It was cold and the sky was colored charcoal with freezing rain. The rig supervisor took me seven miles north of town where one of their workover rigs (also called a pulling unit) was operating. At the time I knew nothing about oil production or rigs. The rig looked like a massive, hulking beast stubbornly planted in the desert, the top of the derrick standing one-hundred-and-four feet in the air like a grimy nail jutting toward the sky. The blocks, a chunk of metal weighing several thousand pounds used to lift and lower equipment, traveled swiftly from the rig floor to the crown of the derrick. Watching the metal move between the two floorhands and the tiny figure in the derrick, I felt a seed of panic sprout in my stomach. That was going to be me on the rig floor?

“Only if you’re up for it,” my buddy told me. I took another look at the rig. The operator revved the rig’s diesel engine, black smoke coughed from the exhaust pipes, and the blocks went skyward, pulling the string of oil-slicked metal pipe with it. “Yeah,” I told him. “I’ll do it.”

For the next year I worked as a roughneck. I jumped from rig to rig, filling in where a man was needed. If a floorhand was injured or sick, I took his place running the tongs. If the derrickman didn’t show or quit or was let go, I filled in on the floor while someone took his place. If all the rigs were running with four men, a full crew for a pulling-unit, I served as a hot-shotter, a glorified gopher, delivering parts and equipment to rigs anywhere along a two-hundred-mile stretch spanning from Sterling City, Texas, to Hagerman, New Mexico. Under the cover of hardhat and with coveralls and skin stained black with oil, my perspective of those flat plains with their endless flares and tank batteries and droning pumpjacks changed. My boyhood playground was now the office.

My mornings as a roughneck typically began at five a.m. The rumble of diesel engines all over town served as the crow’s call, the signal to wake up before the operator came to pick me up from my house. Once the entire crew was collected, the previous day’s rig ticket—which details the job performed the day before, the materials used, and the crew’s hours—is dropped off at the company yard and any parts or tools needed are collected from the tool pusher. The pusher oversees the rigs and is usually the main point of contact between the crew and the company man (the person subcontracting the rig).

The next stop is a local gas station: Stripes, Allsups, Valero, wherever has the cheapest diesel and shortest lines. A boomtown gas station in the early hours of the morning is a sight to behold. Roughnecks, roustabouts, pumpers, truck drivers, swampers, tool pushers, mudders, and company men descend upon these convenience stores for ice, coffee, and fuel for the trucks and the rigs. If you don’t have a wife or girlfriend packing you a lunch at home, you buy your lunch here: foil-wrapped burritos, fried chicken, steamed burgers. There are lines at every register, and every register is open. Like grannies at a small-town beauty parlor, the guys gossip about work, other crews, and each other’s families, using language a tad saltier than what you might hear at the salon.

Some men show up to the stations looking for work. “I just came in from Houston. Y’all need a hand?” someone might ask at the pump. It’s not uncommon to see a pusher pick one of these guys up. If a pusher is really in a bind, he’ll stalk a station looking to steal a whole crew. He’ll try to coax them into coming to work for him with promises of a nicer rig, newer tools, steady work, and most importantly better pay. Roughnecks are known to turncoat for a nickel more an hour.

The last of the morning ritual took place when we arrived on location, which almost always happened just as the sun was rising, no matter how far the rig was from town. The crew would shuffle into the doghouse, a small enclosed trailer, hauled from location to location by roughnecks. Here we would doff our street clothes, hang them in our lockers in the doghouse, slip into coveralls, and snatch a fresh pair of cotton gloves and our hard hats. The rig fired up. This was the last time we’d be clean for twelve hours.

A workover rig is, in the simplest terms, a smaller, mobile version of a drilling rig. Whereas a drilling rig’s objective is to “make hole” for a new well, a workover rig is used when an older well has gone offline and must be “worked over.” The pages of petroleum engineering textbooks are filled with reasons a well may quit producing, but more often than not the well must be “pulled,” meaning the tubing (metal pipe which functions as a sort of straw) and the rods (used to manually pump the fluid up through the tubing) must be pulled from the hole in order to fix the problem. Pulling a well takes up the majority of a workover rig’s time. The task isn’t particularly complex—most of the required motions becomes muscle memory after a short while—but every well seems to harbor one or two special quirks ensuring no one gets too bored or too comfortable.

One truth that transcends the differences between drilling rigs and pulling-units is that all new recruits are “worms.” A worm is easily spotted by his green hard hat and usually by his sluggishness compared to the other hands. Most worms like myself start on the rig floor. A floorhand is responsible for working the tongs, which is more or less a jumbo, hydraulic-powered wrench used to break connections on the rods and tubing. There are normally two floorhands working in tandem, and those two are usually the dirtiest on the crew—anything that comes up wet from downhole gets on these guys. The hand working high above the others on the tubing board is the derrickman. His primary task is to unclamp the rods and tubing, so the blocks can travel down for another haul. The added risk of falling to his death earns the derrickhand a little extra pay and is a sought-after position for young, cash-hungry worms. The operator is the captain of the ship. Not only does he control the rig’s every move, he’s responsible for corralling his crew, for constantly checking pressures and weight, and dealing with shit from the company men. Every time the rig groans to life, millions of dollars of equipment and the lives of three men are literally in his hands.

When it comes to actual application of safety in the field, OSHA has a whole book on that, too, although no roughneck I know has read the damn thing. This is a job learned by doing, either by watching the men around you or by heeding their stream of swear-laced instruction. The first safety lesson I learned on the rig was profoundly simple: “Never stick your hand where you wouldn’t stick your dick.”

Safety protocols also dictate fashion, such as it is in these parts. By that I mean that mustaches are the only facial hair men are allowed to grow; beards and goatees prevent self-contained breathing apparatuses (SCBAs) from sealing to the wearer’s face. I’m convinced there is no higher concentration of mustaches in the world than the oilfields of West Texas. A baby-smooth face in the field is like a bull rider wearing a tiara—it’s just not right.

I grew a mustache, a grooming decision that earned me the nickname Cantinflas. The coloring of my facial hair—blonde in the middle, darker along the ends—reminded some of the guys of the Mexican comedian’s famously strange mustache. Other crews knew me as Sparky, the rig term for electrician, and quite a few of the Hispanic guys called me Gringo. Not original, but most monikers aren’t. One dude addressed me as Justin on the first day and though I corrected him, he never called me anything else.

Some crews spent months working together and didn’t know each other’s real names. In the field, knowing one another’s life story is not a priority. You’re given a nickname and that’s that. Some get named based on origin: Pampa from Pampa, Pecos from Pecos, Quirky from Albuquerque. A lot of guys are known by the female versions of their names: Antoinette, Stephanie, Roberta. At one point I was working with three “Lupes” at once. Certain names we used for one another I would not repeat in front of my mother. And, of course, no collection of nicknames would be complete without at least one based in irony. Shorty was a six-foot-eight colossus who worked as a spooler for Baker Hughes. He dipped Copenhagen, about half a can per pinch. Shorty lumbered around the rig floor like an adult trying to navigate a kiddie playground. He was, as the saying goes, a gentle giant. One time, during a particularly messy job, he stopped the rig for a hug break. Both of us covered in oil and dripping in decades-old drilling mud, he wrapped his arms around me in a smelly, sloppy embrace. No one—especially a fella who reminds his co-workers of a scrawny comedian with a funny mustache—refuses a hug from Shorty.

But that money spends fast. Much like the cowboys of the Old West riding into town after weeks driving cattle with pockets full of freshly-made cash, a roughneck can net over $2,000 on pay day and return to the rig on Monday a broke man. Child support, court fees, truck payments, mortgages, and alcohol purchases suck a man’s pockets dry.

A floorhand I met left his law firm on the East Coast to find solace in the heat and hurt of the rigs after his life had crumbled at home. The lawyer had been on a pulling-unit for over a year when he lost a couple fingertips while tripping pipe. He’d never be able to play the guitar again, at least not like he could before. He returned to the rig after recovering, but something in his psyche shifted. Just wasn’t the same, they’d say. He eventually left the rigs to work in the yard, and quit a month or so later.

It is undeniable that life as a roughneck is dangerous. When I told my parents that I would be working as a floorhand on a pulling-unit, a notoriously treacherous job, my mom cried. Several family friends have been killed in the field. Injuries or deaths of workers are reported nightly on local channels. I promised my parents I would keep myself safe.

It may have sounded empty when I made it, but that promise saved my life. One scorching June day, our rig was swabbing a well. The process is simple enough, considered one of the most mundane tasks a workover rig can perform: ridged rubber cups are sent downhole to pull up sand or other unwanted junk out of the tubing so the well can flow more efficiently. I was the only fluent English-speaker on the crew at that time, which made me the point of contact with the company man. He had just called to get a progress report and gave the order to shut down for the day.

I climbed the steps to the rig floor to pass the word onto the operator. There was a popping noise. The sound of metal striking metal in the derrick. I thought the entire rig might be coming down. There was no time to look. I clambered over the side-rail and jumped about eight feet to the ground. I was running away from the rig as soon as my feet hit dirt. I reached the edge of location, forty yards away, before turning to see what had happened.

The operator was slumped over the brake handle on the catwalk. The other floorhand was laying on the rig floor, about three feet from where I had jumped. The sand line, a wire cable over half an inch thick meant to hold an extraordinary amount of weight, had snapped. Spinning violently back around the winch drum, the cable had unraveled into strands of flailing wire. The operator was struck in the back, his shirt ripped between his shoulder blades where two fine gashes appeared. The floorhand was hit in the leg. He had to pull some wire out of his calf.

By the time I drove the floorhand to the hospital, his boot was filled with blood. No one was seriously injured that day, but a buddy who works in safety told me it could have been much worse. “Normally when a sandline breaks, you don’t take a man to the hospital—you pick pieces of him out from around the drum.”

There was a part of me that did feel yellow, like I had done a disservice to the crew. But staring down at my ten fingers and wriggling all ten toes, I didn’t let myself feel too bad. “No, man, there was nothing you could have done,” my supervisor reassured me. “I’d have been hauling ass, too.”

The road can be just as dangerous as the rig. Once we were driving to location somewhere south of Artesia, New Mexico, and the only way to get there was a rural highway with no shoulder. I was in my own truck, so I could peel off from the caravan to deliver parts to another rig. The crew was following but never made it to location. Dispatch called—an 18-wheeler had hit their truck. The company truck was totaled. I took the crew to a hospital in Hobbs, but, on the order of the foreman, stopped at a clinic first to get each man tested for drugs.

These days, a rolled ankle could require a drug test. This is a far cry from the oilfield I grew up hearing about where rig hands regularly used cocaine or crank to keep themselves alert for days. Most guys today rely on energy drinks for a boost, guzzling several liters throughout the day. Not that this is much better than the drug alternative. Workers collapse regularly due to dehydration and other complications brought on by drinking too much of these caffeine cocktails. This wasn’t like drinking a few cups of coffee at a computer while powering through for a deadline; when we powered up with 5 Hour Energys or Monsters, it was a do-or-die attempt at willing our depleted muscles to keep moving in intense cold or oppressive heat. Because the work rarely stops.

Almost nothing halts operations on a rig—wind and ice among the exceptions. There were plenty of times a dust devil would blow in from a nearby cotton patch. Like a mini sand tornado, red dirt would come tearing across the caliche pad, leaving everyone in its path with grit in their eyes and teeth. While these were a nuisance, sustained high winds can cause real problems for the derrickman. Even though the substructure holding the derrick is rated to withstand gusts up to eighty miles per hour when the guide-lines are properly secured to the anchors (extra-long screws sunk into the four corners of the pad), a nasty West Texas wind can make even an experienced derrickhand squeamish. No foreman wants to lose time getting a well back online, but no good supervisor wants to risk the derrickman’s safety while handling pipe in strong winds, either.

As for ice, I spent several days watching my breath rise in the doghouse waiting for the rig to thaw. The puny flame from a propane tank did little to stymie the cold from working its way into every bone. On those days we sat mostly in silence. Each man journeying alone in his thoughts while smoke from a Marlboro Red curled between us. Outside, wind kicked ice from the derrick. Watching the white fluff fall, it could have almost passed as snow.

When the field is booming and the machine shops and supply stores are swamped with orders, it can take hours for a part to be delivered to location from town. Waiting around for a pump or special part is what we called a “hurry up and wait” situation. I always welcomed these breaks in the action as a chance to look for sun-bleached bones in the fields surrounding the rig or catch up on some reading. I wasn’t the only crew member with a predilection for reading, if the crumpled, mud-caked Playboy always lying around the doghouse was any indicator. But even during these down times, there is usually some work to be done: scrubbing tools with diesel, shoveling the pad clean of oil stains, or maintenance on the rig (there’s always some part that needs to be replaced or hobbled back together with bailing wire).

One of the few truly relaxing moments of oilfield work, at least to me, were the long drives from town to some far-flung corner of the field. While there are many who would claim West Texas is flat and ugly (and they wouldn’t be absolutely wrong), there is plenty of beauty when you know where to look. Over the Monahans sand dunes, I marveled at brilliant swatches of red, pink, and gold coloring the sky at dawn. I learned to search the horizon at sunset for speckled barn owls fluttering from their roost. Once when I was leading the rig down Highway 385 just as daylight started to spread over the prairie, a Vivaldi violin concerto came crackling over the FM radio. I rolled down the windows, turned up the stereo, and let the music float out over the mesquite. The rig behind me in the rearview, I had to laugh at the surreal poetry of the moment. In a place like this, you take it when you get it.

Every rig crew is, in its own way, a weird little family. And our home is the doghouse. It is the locker-room, the water cooler, cafe, equipment room, office, smoke spot, and sanctuary of rig hands. It’s where we deliver a message or drop off tools. It’s here that roughnecks and operators catch their breath, stash their street clothes, huddle inside for warmth, or retreat for shade. It’s where company men and crew members gather for shared meals. It’s where a good cook, a treasured member of any crew, would set up his disca, a tractor-disc-turned-makeshift-wok, and sear fajita meat or fry picadillo.

Even though we spent many hours together in the doghouse, most of the guys in my crew didn’t know much about me—and I doubt they cared to, which was fine by me. When I left the oilfield the following January, I was realistic about my role out there. I was a tourist in a sense, just passing through. Not many people can hack the job for any prolonged period of time. It is a temporary means to an end, a payday loan one makes with his body. I’m proud to be able to say that I did it, that I was a roughneck—a member of that motley crew of rascals and ruffians. I carry a new appreciation for those fields of my youth and the men who work them. Covered in the guts of the earth, the rig roaring beneath me, I finally understood a truth that few know: Texas is rich with oil, but it’s the blood and sweat of the roughneck that keeps it pumping.

SUMMARY: A Workover Rig Floor Hand is responsible for performing services on oil wells utilizing a double, single, and Pole Rig. The duties of the floor hand include assisting in rigging up/down, pulling/laying rods, tubing, casing and other functions as specified by the rig operator.

Handle tubing, rods, casing and associated equipment such as rod strippers, polish rods, etc. The rig hand will operate rod wrenches, tongs, elevators, and associated equipment.

Must have one - two (1-2) years of experience within oil and gas workover rigs, drilling rigs, production facilities, pipeline labor or equivalent experience.