Where do you live, how old are you, and do you like your wife? You have asked a question like everyone lives 2 miles from where you do. In the oil patch things are boomong. In areas of the north east and upper midwest, you cant buy a job. Some places a person with minimal experience can get hired on easily, other regions you are gonna have to be able to weld well before they even look at you.
Pipelining is a glorious life. Money like you can never spend, travel, stay in the finest hotels and eat at the finest resturants. Hey you got the money!
Like Concord California. Contractor pays you 100 per sub and a hooker shack cost 75 plus tax and you wind up eating your 3 squares at Burger King just to make your sub strech. Yea it s a facinating life.
I thought auto techs were suposed to be paid almost 6 figure incomes. Isn't that what the mechanics school in Phoenix blows up the high school grad skirts. You work in airconditioned comfort and never get dirty.
Welding is just like any other job. It has its good points and bad points. If you are looking at welding as a career change because you are bored at the everyday routiene of your present job, then pipelining will be the most mind numming work you can do. As in you present trade, to be really good at what you do, it has to be a calling. You have to be passionate about what you are doing. If you are wanting to get into welding because you are facinated with watching sparks fly and starting with a pile of pipe and fittings and winding up with a compressor station, then maybe you can be a welder. But if you are bored with being an auto tech and are looking at something else where maybe you wont be so bored, I dont think you will be too happy with weldeing either.
But I could be worng.
BABRT's
There's a lot of missinformation in that one post.
First you toss out the tired stupid comment to insinuate that people who travel in the course of their work "don't like their wives". I know hundreds of people who make a living in a field that sometimes involves travel that enjoy sound,solid "spousal relationships" from a Master Sgt in Iraq to an insurance company executive to a factory rep for General Electric's turbine division to pipeline welders to boilermakers/pipefitters/millwrights/electricians/tinners/operators/ect/ect. The pipeline construction season typically runs from May thu October.
Then you throw out the tired old dig that people who travel for work have to live like dogs, staying in a "hooker shack", eating 3 meals a day at "burger king". Complete stupidity. Like a lot of people, I've got a pretty decent and very comfortable RV. And nice motels, extended stay motels and apartments are available all across this country. Good, nutritious meals are available in all locations as well. If someone chooses to live in a crack head motel and eat poor food, that's a (poor) personal choice, not a requirement due to their career choice.
The mechanics I know DO make high 5 figures/low 6 figures.
I have personally worked in the Concord CA area more than once. Always with pretty nice accomodations in nice neigborhoods. I've also stayed in Pinole and Valleo and Modesto. All around the Concord area over the years.
You speak often about the "oil patch", readers not familiar should understand that Pipelining is not the same as oil patch welding. If a guy wants to make an honest living hooking up wells and welding 2" flowlines and the other misc. work done in the oil patch that's fine, but don't call it pipelining. Pipelining is not the oil field and the oil field is not pipelining.
The "upper midwest" has been loaded with work for a couple of years now. Several 42" lines are being laid as we speak. I have freinds who live in the northeast and they have stayed pretty busy this year in upstate NY and surrounding areas. Where do you get this "can't buy a job there"? It's just flat wrong.
There are people doing all sorts of various jobs that enjoy their work and make a decent living. It takes all kinds, wot everyone is dying to follow your career path. Taking shots at an entire craft, for whatever reason, says more about you than it does about those practicing that craft.
JTMcC, happily helping to build transmission pipelines across America.
who pissed you off? i agree with the intent of kahunna's post. it is typical
what is the difference between oil patch and pipelining? i always assumed that pipelining was oil lines. i am not a welder by trade i am an electrician. i do read this board alot but i dont work in your field so i dont know the difference.
pipelining would be x country lines. oil patch would be at a well. i believe
oil patch work is different from pipelining in the oil patch you do it all build new rigs go to location and repair whats broken on the rig at any time of day ot nite and you're there til your done it aint 9-5 it's get there do it and make it right sometimes your there 3 or 4 hours and sometimes your there 3 or 4 days yes strait you catch a lil nap if you can but usually you cant yes its hard on the body but depending on where you live and what they are paying you can make good money for instance i left the house at 4 am yesterday to go work in the yard putting a rig together at 2pm i got sent out to rig 10 i got to location at 3:30 pm i got home at 2 am the co i work for if your out most of or all nite you can take the next day for rest cause they need you fresh and well i came down with an ass kicker of a cold so i stayed at the house today will be there tomorow with a pocket full of meds to get me thru the day
Hey JTMcC,
Thanks for the information, yeah I figured the part about not liking their wives was not true. I figured that if I do switch careers to welding and I have to travel I will purchase an rv just because I don't like hotels that much and I've never heard of people who travel for their jobs living like dogs, there's a guy who is a welder at the church I go to that has been welding for twenty years and he lives nicely, hell his RV is twice as nice as the trailer I live in but I am still researching and decideing. And as for the mechanics pay it really depends on the dealership and their shop also it has to do with your speciality area for example I am a heavy line diesel tech which does head gaskets and engine swaps on diesel trucks, but I just am tired of it really I have been doing this for just three years but I know I haven't been doing it long I am just researching right now but each day I am leaning more towards switching careers something about welding seems interesting. If you have any advice on welding schools you might let me know.
Thanks JTMcC
I think the local 798 does schools in tulsa,if that helps
It's basically like DBK says; if you don't love it, you won't learn to. Welding is a science and an art, and the only way to learn it is to do it, over and over and over until you can do it in your sleep. I'm not talking about a $8/hr beginner here. The guys on the line making the big bucks have plenty of experience and know-how to back up that paycheck. Honestly, I wouldn't recommend a switch to welding for a career for anyone over say 35, not if it's going to be that person's main income. I have seen guys break in later than that, but it's tough to compete with some 20-something who can contort himself (or herself) into any shape needed to get at the job. No one's trying to scare you off, just letting you know some of the little-known details of the job that might turn people away.
Hey thabozaktwo1,
I understand that welding is an art and a science that is why I am fascinated by it, and I am just 20 so contorting myself should be easy, but when you work on 6.0 ford diesels then you have to have arms that turn into liquid so I understand the flexible part. inI understand that no one is trying to scare me off I appreciate the input. The little known details are the ones I want to know about.
Wow! I thought that folks here in the Northeast were high strung. Some of these guys would have you walking home while talking to your lunchbox!
It all boils down to you what YOU want to do. I would try a basic class and see if you like it. From there, you will know if you want to continue on to a career in welding, or maybe just weld at a hobby level, or never weld again. I always say that a person makes his/her own luck but you can certainly make a good living at it. Also, welding can lead off to the dark side (inspection and testing) or many other directions.
In our area, welders are in short supply. Pretty much any welder who wants to work already is. Pay rates vary but I suspect that an experienced welder would make as much as you are now. The pay can be a bit low while you are working on experience though.
Not all welding jobs require extensive travel. There are jobs in fixed location like fabrication shops and factories and everything in between.
Hey CHGuilford,
I learned to weld in FFA I really enjoyed it and now I weld for a hobby and what I need to do on my farm I enjoy it. When you say the dark side please explain. Really the jobs that require travel are the ones I am leaning towards I just don't think that fabrication would be my cup of tea but I could be wrong.
bandit, some folks view inspectors as a "necessary evil" because inspectors often have to deliver the bad news when the workmanship is not good enough. Many inspectors started off as welders and branched off to inspection, hence my reference to the "dark side".
My other point was that there are many kinds of jobs involving welding, that a person could try out. Not all require travel.
Hey bandit,
I do agree with JTMcc and Chet and would only add that welding is a career "we" choose because it is work we love to do and have a passion to simply get better each day. If you have a job that you consider the doldrums, not look forward to doing anymore, and become mediocre in your work ethic, then you indeed should consider another career....and welding may or may not be the one. You must give serious thought to the type of work that interests you and would provide the satisfaction at the end of the day you know you did your best and it was another good day and look forward to tomorrow. It's there or it's not....only you can determine it. At least look into the career of welding, the possibilities, and the type of work you would like to engage. Do some online Googleing about welding and the trades. Good luck in your query and interest in welding....Denny
hey yorkiepap,
Thanks for the info to be completely honest I actually wanted to go to welding school when I graduated high school but my future wife didn't want me to be gone so she told me that I should reconsider my career choice, but now that I am unhappy about the career that I have she is reconsidering, it also helps that her best friend's husband is a welder and they are very happy so she said that if I wanted to change my career she is behind me all the way. I am just looking for some advice on welding and what careers in the welding field and which would best suit me.
welding is just like baseball, there is beer leagues all the way up to world series champs. the pay is commensurate with your talent within your league. pipelining is the majors and if you want to play in the majors you must have inherent talent and be highly motivated to succeed, there are also many other big league types of welding. pressure vessels, refineries, boilermaking and many many more. what you have to ask your self is what income you would be happy with and find out what types of welding will supply that wage, then determine whether you are willing to commit to whatever it takes to achieve that goal. i cant say i enjoy welding per say but i am very motivated and it brings great self respect to do my job. i like it very much. it is very very hard work and there is a lot easier ways to make money. sometimes it is so boring it almost drives you crazy. try welding a few thousand joints and see if it doesn't become monotonous.
fabrication is much more interesting and a moderate fabricator makes much more than a moderate welder.
all in all high end welding is a pretty good trade it seems to attract a certain personality type people who strive for excellence and intensity of character. if you do choose to give it a whirl i wish you luck and success.
darren
JTMcC, That went right by you.
No apologies. The guy is bored with auto mechanics becaust it is routiene work. Capping 42 inch all day is not? YOu have pipelined and have not pulled into a town and the only place you can stay is some hooker shack because either the sub is too low or the hotels are full? Every pipeliner you know has a stable 20 year marrage and gets home every other week? A guy is bored with a job he gets home every night, something tells me he will not have a lot of success being away from home weeks at a time.
But I guess that is some mis-information. Pipeliners dont stay away from the house that much.
Must have been a parallel life I was living???????
BABRt's
yeah your right I am bored with it, going to work each day knowing that some piece of crap diesel has popped head gaskets and the customer needs his truck tomorrow, even thought the parts will not even be there for two days. And yes some auto techs make low 6 figure salaries but that is in larger cities, I live in Claremore Oklahoma which is about 23 miles northeast of tulsa and yes I do like my wife.
Hey you say I will not have a lot of success being away from home weeks at a time, well you could be correct but right now I am staying in Claremore and my wife lives in Ada Oklahoma which is about four hours apart I know it isn't cross country but I am used to not seeing my wife every night and we are both cool with it don't judge until you know me.
darre,
Thanks for being honest so far every welder I've talked to in person either loves thier job, or they are feeding me a line of crap but no one has every said that it will be boring but then again I just don't know all this feed back is great.
welding is pretty cool for about the first 30 years, then it can start to get a tad repetitive. It pays the bills, though, and the wages are only going up.
I imagine that would be about any job but I think welding would be more exciting than working on cars and trucks, don't get me wrong be a mechanic is cool just boring.
Bandit, You are young, give it a try. If You don't like it after a few years try something else. That is a lot better than staying with something You don't like untill You feel You are too old to change and saying "If only I had..."
I think your right my wife does to she said that even if it pays less as long as I am happy then why not, I may go out and love it and then again I may hate never know until you try
the old lady says its cool right now till you actually are gone for awhile then you find out if it really is cool with her or not . Try acouple hitches as a helper and see if it works for you both or not. If it doesnt then maybe try a fab shop ,or vessel shop. You can always weld in town for a little less
you could be right never know till you try she is pretty cool living apart right now she is in college, we only see each other about one weekend a month if we are lucky but it might be different after she gets out
spent many a night consouling those that didn't have the help of a good women. Lot's of'em love ya till you are not home on a regular basis, I count my lucky stars everday 23yrs and counting.
yeah I asked her again last night she still says she is cool, she says that she will support me in what ever I do.
Here's my history. Before I took up welding I was making a whopping 8 bucks an hour back home in a shop that sold rocks and cookware, while saving up cash to go to art school. After sleeping through most of the "important courses" (art history, some literature and pop culture courses. The studio stuff however, was great!), I decided it wasn't for me. The 4 months after, I worked in a liquor store making a whopping 8.50 an hour, saving up fundage for trade school. I had never been so bored in my life, and wanting something more.
Since taking up welding, my wages have more than doubled. I've also never been a people person, so that helps!
The funny part is, in art school, I built a chair from square tubing and welded it woth oxy/act...and in the process while cleaning up, burned my hand on one of the clamps I had been using to hold everything together. I'm not sure if it was the construction, or the campus medics and the hillarity that they sent two guys, one with an air tank, to remedy it, but between point A and point B, I realised that I wanted to weld! :)
One thing I've learned though, is to do your thing. Open, yes. But it doesn't get any simpler. Git'r'dun!
that is kinda how I feel I went to Oklahoma State University- Okmulgee to be a ford tech it was cool, you went to school for 8 weeks then to intern for 8 now I am out and I have been doing it awhile I make 20.00 per hour but I am on flat rate or basically if what ever the labor guide says is all I get paid for example if they quote you 20 hrs to do headgaskets then that is all I get paid for whether it takes me 10 or 40 so in away you could make a but load or you could loose you a** I just want to do something that I think is fasinating but not my hobby, that was my mistake making my hobby into my job
You are not the first guy who ruined a hobby by doing it for a living. While it works for some, it doesn't for everybody.
true true I am realizing it now, but still glad I did this for awhile least I can say I tried it wished I could have realized that what I like doing for a hobby wasn't what I would like to do for a career.
As you can see, this topic touches a lot of people. If this topic had started where you were interested in welding and was wanting to change careers, I would be one of the first to encourage you to persue this craft. However, you stuck in the "P" word.
Except for tankies, there is probablly not a better bunch of people on this earth. They will live and die for each other. Guys run together for years. But there has to be something a little wrong with those of us who will leave home for months at a time. If you were working in a shop or doing local work, being at home every night or almost. Getting to see your kids grow up, go to school, coach a youth baseball team, teach Sunday school, you know have a normal life.
Instead the road warriors life is none of this. You dont get to see the kids go to school, come home or help them with their homework. The water heater bust and the refrigerator goes out. The water well goes out and the wife and kids do not have water. Friends and people you are close to die and you cannot get back to be with their families or your own. Or the wife has to go in for surgery and you are 3000 miles from the house. If you are not turning and burning, you are not getting paid.
Some sink into a bottle or get on a powder. And all of it is for money.
I dont know if you have kids. If you do, your wife will be the greatest influence on them. You will not be there. I was fortunate I had a wonderful wife who raised out kids well. BUt I know many who cannot say that. They lost 2-3 wives and dont know their kids. I nearly lost mine twice. And she has a really good sense of humor.
Dont say I will do it for a little while and if I dont like it or my wife hates it I will quit. By then you cant. The traveling is a drug. Having the freedom to go where you want doing what you love, you cannot beat it. Getting PO'd at a company, dragging up to another and never looking back is powerful. So powerful you forget what is really important. Running the road is a lifestyle. Like being a biker. You forget about bills, payments and obligations. Does this happen to every one who travels on the road? I dont know as I have not met everybody, and maybe there are some who dont do this to escape responsibility. I know guys who can run a spread of 75 men and equipment but have had 3 wives and have not seen their kids in 10 years. They have spent more nights in 10 year in a motel bed or a travel trailer than they have under their own roof. This is NORMAL?????
I have a great career and do enjoy what I do. And I am trying to break myself from the road thing bit. But it is hard, and if given the chance to do some thing s different, I do not think I would choose this life again. I sold some really priceless things just for $$$.
Think about that.
BABRT's
Well said DBK!
Yeah you are right this topic does touch people, people who have been out there and done this for awhile that is why I started it, I wanted to know what guys who have been out there and done it. When you say stuck in the "P" word what do you mean?
I understand what you mean doing local work and being home would be nice, and maybe still a possibilty for me just dont know exactly, having the freedom of being on the road sounds awsome, but having the wife to rub my back after a hard days work would be nice, and I don't have kids so I really can't respond to the kids part. I guess you did turn a light on when you talk about how you wont be there for the little things, maybe my wife should read some of these post and then give me her opinion, I mean some of the stuff you mentioned sounded like a dream but other things make you think.
The part about the bottle and the powder doesn't fit me, but who knows.
My wife wil stand by me no matter what she has for four years now, she is great no matter what wild and crazy a** thing I say I want to do she right there behind me as long as we can afford it, I mean it not like she won't miss me, or vice versa just that is the thing about us we can always work through stuff togather, I think I would be one of the fortunate ones that would have a great wife waiting for me at home.
I understand what you are saying if you start something like this and you love it then you can't quit, Just the little bit of traveling I did for the job I have now, I loved it. Traveling does make you feel free and like you have no responsibilties. Now when you say having the freedom to go where I want and do what I love sounds great, and I see what you are saying about the guys you are talking about.
If I do choose that to go that way with my career the advice you gave me will be very helpful and I thank you for it. The road thing sounds cool but I don't know if it is for me, you say that you wouldn't choose that life again, thanks for being honest, I feel the same about the career I have chosen. Thanks again
thebandit
a must read for everyone who thinks they want the big money, takes a real man to tell it like that. good on yah
Hi , As a portable welding business owner/operator and fter 29 yrs in the oilfield I call the jobs I get the Good ie : hotpassin on pipeline for good $ , the Bad ie : drilling rig repairs complete with dragging cables through the mud and getting splashed with diesel fuel etc. and the Ugly ie : A farmer friend brings you a bent & twisted piece of farm machinery and by the time you have it fixed you are almost a mental case ha -ha. A very good post by Darren by the way . Starting out in a new trade may mean a drop in pay till you get some experience, I seriously considered leaving welding and taking some mechanics, but with a wife & kids and mortgage etc. I decided I couldn't do it financially. It's always good to have experience in another line of work in my opinion just in case work dries up like it did in the oilfield here in the early 80's. Best of luck to you. Welding has been personally a very rewarding carrier for me, heck I still just can't keep away from my rig.
Well I don't know about mud but I stay covered in diesel fuel all day anyway, and having a grandfather and father that does not understand that tractors are not tanks and they will break, not to mention that they are to cheap to replace the stuff you have to just do a little engineering. well you said that a new trade will have lower pay until you have experience well right now the pay might be better, I just do heavyline and I am not that fast at that so I don't make that much, that is why I am thinking of switching careers.
Bandit, follow your heart. If you really want to try welding as a career then do it. But dont do it half-assed. Give it everything youve got. Never stop learning how to be better, strive to be a little better everyday. I started welding in 1970 and I have never regretted one single day. I started out in local fab shops to gain experience, moved on to structural welding and then on to pipe welding. I have worked in Nuclear Power Plants and Vessel Shops learning new processes every chance I got. I did the travel thing during the heyday of Nuke plant construction and yes I lost a wife or two along the way. It takes a special relationship to withstand weeks and months apart. I moved over to the "dark side" (inspection) in 1988 and I am still learning. I now work for New York State Dept. of Transportation in the Metals Engineering group. I supervise about 8 inspectors in the field working at fab shops that fabricate new bridges. It is still facinating work being involve in solving welding and fabrication problems. There are many avenues that you can follow. You may not always be stuck in a mundane welding job. Get all the experience you can in every form of welding that you can, and one day it just may pay off. It did for me.
That is what I have decided to do I am going to enroll in a welding program here close and start learning asap I have decided that welding is what I want to do, all the info that you guys Have gave me has been extremely helpful. Hopefully my decision to start a welding career will be great one, once again thanks.
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