It’s July 26, before five a.m., and Fast Trucking Service’s crew have already assembled at a wellsite south of Frobisher.
The last time Pipeline News did a feature on Fast Trucking, it was common for rig moves to start at 7 a.m. No matter where that rig move would originate, be it Oungre, Stoughton, or nearby Glen Ewen, the crews would leave Carnduff in time to be there well before 7 a.m. In the wintertime, that means being at the shop even earlier to warm up the trucks.
This meant if you worked for Fast Trucking, you were a morning person, period. If you were not capable of working at these hours, you likely wouldn’t be working there.
The company in recent years has evolved from being very, very early risers to essentially now working graveyard shifts. That’s because oil companies have shifted the start times of rig moves from 7 a.m. to 5 a.m.
Why the change? Brent Hayward, who has worked with Fast Trucking most of his life and is a truck push, explained that by moving a few hours earlier on each move, and getting the wells spudded that much sooner, over the space of several moves, the oil companies feel they can shave off one day of drilling time. That adds up at a time when every single efficiency is sought due to the low price of oil.
The result is that Fast Trucking crews are out and working well before most people in the oilpatch (who aren’t on a 24/7 basis) are even getting into their pickups.
There is a side benefit to this, actually several. On this day, the forecast was for 32 C, and those temperatures were expected to last throughout the week. If you start your move at 5 a.m., when the temperatures are at a much more tolerable 13 C, it makes the work much more bearable, as the move will typically be done and headed back to the shop by mid-morning, well before the time temperatures spike.
It means the workers, once done with their duties, can do things like head to the lake in the afternoon. Just don’t expect them to be staying up late.
Also, by hitting the road with much of the equipment between 5 and 7 a.m., they also avoid a lot of traffic. Whereas it used to be common to see green Fast Trucking units heading back to Carnduff in the afternoon on almost any highway in southeast Saskatchewan, these trucks are now off the roads usually well before that.
So if you haven’t noticed as many green trucks on the road as of late, it’s probably because they were done working before you even got on the pavement.
This year marks 60 years in business for Fast Trucking Service Ltd. See additional coverage in this month's Pipeline News.
