You don’t get your feet wet in Alberta’s oilpatch. You get them muddy. Most rookies on the drilling crews start out in “The Patch” as a swamper. He’s the guy outside the truck who wades through the mud, hooking the dog-house slings to the pole truck so the driver can suck the draw-works off the sow and get the hay shaker who hauled it onto the lease out of the way so that the matting can be laid down.

At least that’s the job description laid out to me by oilpatch rigging crew veteran Marcel Bisson. Bisson, who lives near the town of Grimshaw, Alta., works for the oilfield services division of Mullen Trucking, and he’s been in the rig-moving business nearly 14 years. The drilling rigs are shunted around a lot in pursuit of the sticky black stuff, and there is perhaps not a tougher, more physically demanding haul in Canada’s trucking industry than right here, deep in the Alberta bush amid the bugs and mud. But to the folks who move the rigs, that muddy trail into the bush is paved with gold.

Bisson started as a swamper, but he worked his way up to one of the biggest trucks you’re ever likely to see on a paved highway: a twin-steer 1998 Western Star pole truck, sitting on a 410-inch wheelbase (it’s 45 feet, seven inches long) with a 475-horsepower Cat under the hood, an 18-speed transmission, with a two-speed tandem rear axle. It has a 75-ton winch behind the cab and a smaller 30-ton winch at the rear of the truck, both hydraulically driven. The whole thing weighs 27,000 kilograms and can go anywhere, move anything, and get him back again, at a top speed of 92 km/h.

If you’re one of Bisson’s swampers, walking speed is just fine, thanks.

Typically, a swamper will work with a single driver for a season or two. It takes time to sort one another out to the point where they work well as a team. Eventually, if the swamper has the desire and the skill, the company might move him onto a tractor or a bed truck where he can’t do too much damage. He may be behind the wheel rather than under them, but he’s still a “hay shaker” until he has several dozen rig moves under his belt. The guys who run the pole trucks and the pickers are the ones who’ve earned their left seats by spending many a winter outside the truck, wading through the mud.

CHOREOGRAPHED CHAOS

Depending on the size of the rig, the rig-moving crew can be anywhere from six to a dozen trucks strong. All the gear is hauled in to the “lease,” the site where the drilling is to be done, and set up by the crew. They don’t run the rig once it’s up, they just move on to the next job. The area around the site is supposed to have been cleared and graded by a prep crew, but that’s not always the case. The rig movers often have to get pretty creative in doing their jobs.

The first item on the set-up agenda is the matting: slabs of steel and wood that are 40 feet long by eight feet wide that form a stable base for the rest of the rig. The matting is lifted off the highboy trailers by the picker trucks, which are mobile cranes mounted on flat-deck trucks and then arranged around the drill hole. The sub, or substructure building, which contains parts, tools, and operating gear for the rig, is then dragged into place above the drill hole.

Occasionally, there’s a little lifting involved. Bisson and his crew had to hoist the truck hauling the draw-works-all the winches, motors, and power equipment required by the drilling apparatus-so that its bed was level with the top of the sub. This makes it easier to winch that heavy assembly into place. Depending on the site, it’s not always practical to use ramps on the mud. In that case, two pole trucks positioned beside the sub will lift the draw-works off the bed truck, while a third pole truck positioned at the other end of the sub pulls the unit into place. The whole effort takes a great deal of choreography, co-operation, communication and teamwork.

The last piece to go up is the derrick. Depending on the size of the rig, the derricks are often trucked onto the lease in a single piece. If the derrick is long enough, the rig movers will use two bed trucks rather than an over-length trailer because the bush roads demand extra power and manoeuvrability. One truck has to make the trip in from the road pushing in reverse while the other pulls from the front. When was the last time you had to back in a 20-mile long driveway?

Once the derrick is in place and pinned down at one side, the winch trucks hook onto the derrick and tip it up. But because of the weight, it often takes another truck, or a Cat or two, to hold the winch trucks in place.

The one chap who’s responsible for this dance with the devil is called a “truck push.” Generally, he has put in his time as a swamper, a gin-poler and a bed truck operator, and knows the rig installation process like he knows how to pull on his pants. He’s a combination of trucker, engineer, foreman, dreamer, and leader of some of the roughest, toughest guys to ever jam a gear. He makes all the calls, and takes the heat if he’s wrong.

One of the best in the business is Mullen’s Tony Lalabertie. He’s been moving rigs for more than three decades, and he’s seen a lot of changes over the years. “Mostly, it’s the rigs,” he says. “They keep getting bigger, and the mud keeps getting deeper.” The trucks are as big as allowed by law, but the rigs get bigger and bigger. Lalabertie says that they do more of the large jobs in the winter when they get a 10% allowance on the truck weights. “The ground is frozen then, too, making the trip into the lease a little easier. But that doesn’t mean the job gets any neater.” It’s pretty easy to get hurt on a job like this, but Lalabertie stresses that the companies take safety more seriously today than they once did.

“There’s a lot of equipment moving around out there. There’s cables and chains everywhere, and the whole thing can be waist-deep in mud,” he says. “It’s a job that demands your complete attention, and a lot of faith and trust in the guys you work with.”

In contrast to the solitary nature of most trucking jobs, rig moving really is an exercise in teamwork. I also noticed a sense of camaraderie you don’t often see in other vocations. These guys will go through hell for one of their own, no matter whose name is on the door.

It must be a nice feeling to know you’re never alone, even when you’re 500 miles north of nowhere.