I guess I'm living the dream in ND. Make sure you know what your are getting into before you pack you bags and make the move.
Any town near the oil fields is changing. Rent was reasonable, but now it's out of control. Over $2000 for a 2 bedroom apartment.
North Dakota Oil Boom Raises Rents, Pushing Seniors Out
The towns are now dirty and ugly places to live. More and more are moving out of there to Bismarck and Fargo. Murder and rapes are on the rise. Way more men then women. Strippers make like $2000 a night because of all the extra men and extra money they have.
America's Boomtown: Crime soars in North Dakota oil boomtown - Oct. 26, 2011
Small cities are being built on the outskirts of towns (man camps). Big companies may hire you and if you are luck you will get a small room in a man camp. If you aren't lucky you are on your own. All RV camp sites are packed and shut down for the winter. Walmart used to offer short term parking to RV campers, but the workers turned the walmart parking lots into campsites and would trash the place. Walmart kicked all RV campers out of it's parking lots. The RV campers moved to the streets... then the city banned campers from city streets. I don't know where they all went now. Farmers are allowed to have a few campers in their yards, so some are renting the spaces out to a couple RVs, but they are getting about $1000 per spot. Locals won't shop at night. Not much to do in these towns but drink.
My inlaws live in Williston.
http://www.suntimes.com/business/739...-man-camp.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/22/yo...pagewanted=all
Minot is on the outskirts of the field and is inundated with oil workers. Last year Minot got hit by a flood they had never seen before. It flooded soooo much of the city. So many people were displaced.. in a city where you couldn't already find a room in a motel because of the oil activity. Now they are trying to rebuild. Some people are trying to live in homes that had many feet of water sitting in it for months. Repair and restore and hope it never happens again. My BIL is working on homes in Minot... he lives in a camper...
Camping isn't so bad.. right? Until winter comes. -20 straight temps and -60 windchill. Trust me. If you haven't felt that before you are in for a shock. Dress warm. I would hate to be on the rigs in that weather. People die trying to keep their campers warm last winter... and it wasn't even that cold outside.
http://bismarcktribune.com/news/loca...cc4c002e0.html
Regular work is really needed in the oil towns. Clerks, cooks, wait staff, medical, teachers, carpenters, mechanics... all in demand.. but the pay isn't anything like the oil fields so if you work at one of these professions you can't afford the increased rent. My inlaws have their mechanic work done 300 miles away from home just because you can't get an appointment for the few shops in town. They can't find any teachers for the schools because they can't make enough to live there. They can't find enough doctors or nurses for the hospitals because there isn't anywhere to stay. (My BIL ran a skill saw over his hand and cut off is thumb. Had to travel to Bismarck to have it repaired. It was ugly but they couldn't do anything but stop the bleeding in Minot). Walmart doesn't unpack the pallets.. they just put them on the floor and customers pull off the pallets. No-one there to stock the shelves. Hardly any cashiers left so checkout lines are very long. All restaurants are full all the time and service is slow because there are only a few waitresses (they make good tips if they are cute.. so I've heard) and even less cooks. The cities are cracking down on food trucks (eat at your own risk... don't know how many have licenses).
http://oilpatchdispatch.areavoices.c.../watford-city/
Traffic shouldn't be bad? Wrong. So many semis and so many drivers that just don't care. You have the fracking water trucks, the oil tankers, the pipe trucks, the equipment trucks... all sharing 2 lane roads. People don't replace their windshields any more because the will just get another chip next week. Some trips take 3X what they used to. Roads are falling apart from all the heavy truck traffic. Accidents are happening all the time with some fatal. Not anywhere enough police and state troopers to keep up with anything... and if they do get tickets, the oil workers just pay it off in cash like it's no big deal at all.
Scrap in the oil fields? Maybe... but with all the semi's loaded with scrap I think they have it covered. There are so many scrappers here in town and
scrap prices are way lower then what you would think... we are land locked with no refineries. All scrap has to go by truck or rail and getting some rail cars is a very tough task for the scrap yards (both of them!) One scrap yard was shut down last year for having to much stuff. They couldn't open again until they moved some of it. At that point the other yard dropped prices to screw over all the sellers... because the could.
Ewaste? I know there are several of us in Bismarck. I know of several in Fargo... I'm sure they are everywhere else... just gotta look a little bit.
I have never seen so many homeless in this town. Actually I have never seen any... but now they are everywhere. Really strange to me. Lots of hitchhikers headed to the oil fields.
I'm gonna stay here and hope they drop some wells on the inlaw's land soon.... I'm tired of working so hard....
http://www.jobsnd.com/sites/default/...nt%20Guide.pdf
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