Tell me about Baker Hughes?

Excellant company.

 

Baker Hughes is a very large oilfield service company akin to Halliburton, Schlumberger, etc. Their pumping services division (cement, acid, frac) in Canada was formed by combining the acquisitions of Nowsco and Fracmaster with BJ Services. That is most likely where you would be working; hauling cement, acid and other fluids, sand, pumping units, etc. Typically good money, long hours and working on some kind of rotation schedule, eg., 15 days on - 5 days off. You will "work" a lot more hours than an OTR driver due to oilfield exemptions (although a lot of hours will be standby), but you will typically be paid for all of them. I expect they have a full benefits program as well. It is hard work and very long hours, but HUGE opportunity, especially if you are interested in more than just driving (I got massive responsibility when I was very young and toured the world on Schlumberger's dime).

 

Hey Onetrack, glad to hear your training is going well. I just did my first loaded run over a mountain range. Didn't blow any shifts. Whew! I have 34 more hours of training and then my road test. I'm doing the same as you and looking in the patch. Looks like we're training on the same tractor too, 'cept mine is blue!

 

Good to hear an update Onetrack. Is your roadtest scheduled on your very last day of training?

I did day one of the airbrakes course today.

 

I'm training with Saferway here in Victoria. They have been excellent so far. I do my road test on the 17th of November. I'm at hour 20 of my training right now. I did my first 2 weeks of class stuff first. Tomorrow I have an H2S course here in Victoria and then back behind the wheel for night driving on Monday.

 

Yeah, I'm not too worried about the test. The class 1 learners was so easy this can't be much worse. I do appreciate the advice though. I've memorized so much out of the dang cmv guide while bored that I've been helping other students quite a bit in class.

I'm doing it in Victoria as I don't have to pay for a motel here. I'm taking the 20 hour certified course instead of just the 16 as that was all that was available. I figure it will give me a little extra training on the airbrakes portion of the pretrip as a bonus. It's funny but the pretrip portion of the road test worries me more than the driving!

I was hoping to set up my road test the way you've described, glad to hear they support that. I'm booked to begin on the 21st, but hope to bump it up to the 14th.

 

After passing a couple Baker Hughes trucks today, I expect they're going to have a few more openings soon. Not because they can't drive (which I have no idea about as they were parked), but if those twit student drivers step out into traffic again they will probably get squished... and it might be by me. Safety vests and traffic cones are no match for a truck bumper.