driller

heavy equipment mechanic

mechanic

entry level associate

diesel mechanic

Boart Longyear

It really is a long year, being away from family and friends 85% of the year. You don’t get any acknowledgment from management on how you are doing as an employee, areas you need to improve on, or ares you are succeeding in. But they will all make jokes behind your back if you aren’t in the “roughneck” crew. I luckily had two maybe three guys I worked with throughout my time here that made it bearable. So THANK YOU, to those guys. They will hire people from out of state cause “it’s a traveling job, it works out well” but in reality they will call you on a Monday evening telling you you have to be at the shop Tuesday morning at 7:00am. When you have a 4 hour commute to the shop. So then you up and leave your family, and can’t even tell them a ballpark of time you will be back home. Management is a joke, company is a joke. Their values are to reward everyone with desk jobs, and all the guys in the field are easily replaceable. I mean if you got to take the job cause you absolutely need one, by all means take it to make some income while looking for another job. They will hire just about anyone. Just make sure you stay longer than 6 months or they will take $500 out of your last paycheck for boots, hard hat, and a lousy jacket. Also the per diem is garbage. 90 bucks for food and to pay for your hotel. Most of the time you’re paying around 70 for a pretty bad hotel, after taxes you got about 15 bucks left for food. Sometimes you will get a hotel that’s like 50. But oh that comes with a price of being in a really bad hotel. Good luck if you go this route. Don’t say I didn’t warn ya. ALSO, don’t go here with the intention you will get your CDL like they tell you, cause you won’t for a very very long time. And it’s not even a class a. It’s only a class B I believe. 

Boart Longyear is a good company.  Health benefits were good.  However, if you value your personal life, ie; spouse, significant other and children, it’s not very accommodating to this.  You spend way too much time away from home.  Days off between shifts never were long enough.  You work 14 straight days, 12 hour shifts.  Your life is strictly Boart Longyear for your entire hitch.  No life, and no enjoyment for 14 days.  Of all the employees I met in the project I was assigned to, the vast majority were miserable, condescending and unarticulate.  Very few employees in the field seemed willing to be helpful.  It was cutthroat.  Fellow employees were ever so eager to throw you under the bus, wether it was deserved, or not.  Supervision did not care one bit about it either.  Management anticipates the high turnover, thus expecting employees coming and going very frequently.  It can be a great job for youngsters, without the commitment of a family.  The work is not overly difficult.  It just was so mundane and tedious.  You do have to have a certain mindset to stick it out, or be stuck in it, because of the money that can be made and some employee’s expenses that need to be met.  I believe Boart Longyear is a good company.  You can make good money.  There were too many negatives about the lifestyle and fellow employees to make this an attractive job.  Supervision and management understand this and rely on the ever revolving pool of employees.  

You make decent money if you can deal with getting bullied by other employees ( Driller and driller helper )
Alot of your questions will go unanswered or you will get yelled at for asking to many questions. If anything goes wrong on site, be prepared to get blamed for everything that happens. if your not working fast enough you will get things thrown at you or get hit. Dont bother contacting upper management about abuse, It makes everything worse. Its a miserable experience to say the least. If you get hurt, you get punished. If you try to go out of your way to do things that need to get done, You will most likely get yelled at and cursed at. Not all drillers or helpers act this way. I was fortunate enough to have worked with 2 great people that actually taught me many things and actually let me run the rig. unfortunately that only lasted for 2 days. After that my old driller was put in charge of the rig and everything i learned was out the window. if you try to work smarter not harder you get the " Talk ". " I Dont care if it makes the job easier, I dont want it done that way " or " This company breeds ( Female Reproductive Organs ), I will not tolerate it. " " You will learn the hard way or hit the highway ".The work is hard, But tolerable, For me it wasn't the job that was bad, It was the way i was treated. All in all, Its not worth your time if you respect yourself. 1/10 would not recommend 

I remember coming into the company as a cold experience.  People thought I was going to supplant them and they would have no duties thereby being eliminated.  Although I did not propitiate this process personally, I did see this happening time and time again.  People were very tentative to open up and provide counsel freely.
Management rarely trained their employees upon arrival, similar employees would train new co-workers then be fired!
There was no incentive to share info freely with new employees as I had experienced first hand.  Plus, there was almost no recognition provided for a job well done!
This culture lead most people into a bunker mentality where they just took care of their own set of responsibilities and avoided joining into work teams; work groups rarely interacted voluntarily.
This caused me great angst due to my formal training in Lean Six Sigma and my desire to do my job efficiently as well as strengthen the company using strategies I had learned.  My emphasis on workplace cooperation and communication integration with the customer gradually diminished.  Eventually, I sought work elsewhere that valued these traits including my highly tuned skills sets In the supply chain sector as advantages to my employer.

Been with this company nearly a decade in the Sonic division in the U.S. Love the job itself, drilling on a sonic rig has taken me to some incredible places. 

Management , however, is another story. The current leadership of the sonic division spends more time planning their next hunt than finding work and securing contracts for their crews. The evidence is in the constant emails of cutting costs rather than working to generate any revenue, so a lot of the time you are stuck at home waiting for the phone to ring. 

When you are on the rig, most of the crew is overall a group of great guys, but getting management address any needs such as equipment or parts without a lecture, guilt-trip, or other complaint is next to impossible. The site supervisors reach out to the home office for such requests, but from there any requests are often put on the back burner. 

Could the company get leadership in place who wants to see their crews succeed for the benefit of the whole company rather than only have priority out for the manager himself and his buddies, the sonic division could be a great place to work. Until then, the division will continue to lose lifelong employees to competitors in hopes to escape poor leadership.

What is the best part of working at the company?
Cool guys on the crews but not much other then that make some good friends but the pay isn't worth the hassle and constant confusion and disarray of management 

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Not knowing when you'll be going home. Sometime 7 days then home for 3 or 30+ days and hone for 10 days. Not worth the constant hassle with payroll requesting shorted hours. Witch they manage to do about 1 a month or more. 

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Works easy 12 hour days. Worst part is your just a number they say family oriented company" but throw a fit if you turn down coming off days off early or staying longer on your hitches. Management demands 5 star employees and makes it clear you are replaceable but pays 2 star pay with subpar retirement and medical

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Go to work get told your not good enough the numbers aren't good enough. Upper management degrades you if you don't hit numbers. Some going as far as to call people lazy or worthless. But don't say it back or you won't have a job

•	Operations Manager in Oregon with revenue in excess of 12 million. 
•	Direct contact for client’s relations to provide great customer service.
•	Assist NW Corporate Zone Manager in budget and forecasting. 
•	Manage multi-site drilling services operations to ensure that executions of projects 
are in compliance with contract terms and conditions –budgets.
•	Review field equipment orders, modify and expedite. Assess project needs 
and deploy resources to best effect project needs.
•	Ensure that daily reports are accurate and consistent complete billing and sign off with clients.
•	Improved area safety recordable from 13.6 the first year to 0 for the next 23 months with no recordables.
•	Responsible for a fleet of over 73 pieces of equipment along with 45 employees. 
•	Highly experienced in all aspects of core drilling & geotechnical drilling. Strong strengths in exploration drilling – bidding and estimating.
•	Capable of working in team in accordance with tight schedules, budgets and strict safety regulations.

Hard but fun , every days a new day I call it, 'TACKEL THE CHALANGE OF TOMORROW ',

I learned that's  nothing is impossible, learn every task, no matter what level, and  perform in a safety manner, will become possible to achieve .

The management are very professional in every way they conduct themselves throughout ,helpful with clear communication and assuredly .

Co-worker are part of a family while you're away from your own,  fun to work with, learn form them so they be able to teach others to do the same to improve the standard in the company and the industry.

The hardest part of the job is to not been able to be in two place at one, to help others while others need you at the same time,

 
The most enjoyable part of the job or any job is the dedicating of your knowledge to others so they will help other in many ways.

Working as a drill is assessor or a long year was a really great paying job, paid very well especially with per diem gave extra pay for overtime which you were pretty much guaranteed during a rotation each month money is definitely not an issue.

The only disadvantages is that the work is hard the hours are long very labor-intensive physically exhausting you will be gone from home for long periods of time. You all spend an average of anywhere from 10 to 20 days or longer out of the month before having a roughly about a week off at home definitely was a great paying job but the work life balance was atrocious. 

In order to survive in the field working you have to have a type a personality most of the people who encounter are type a personalities which can lead to a lot of confrontation supervisor really good expectation that you will carry yourself and work hard and that reputation will follow you everywhere you go in the company.

You can make a ton of money, i made almost 100k my last year, HOWEVER...
keep in mind that your needs are not important to pushers/supervisors and project manager, you are NOT going to put 12 hours daily,  its more like 14 but you only get paid 12, the reason is that worksites in the best cases its an hour drive, so you have to go get diesel and supplies on your time be at your site  before you clock in and still need to drop core samples after your shift. Upper management makes really poor decisions on where to send helpers/drillers, theres a project not even 30 minutes to my home, however they put me somewhere almost 3 hours away from home, company needs are always a priority over your needs at this company,  if your cool with that and the fact that you work 12 hours with not even a lunch break you'll be alright. Long story short, great money but be ready to miss alot of important moments with your family, is not worth it. 

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Driller 50 salaries reported	$95,560 per year
Heavy equipment mechanic 2 salaries reported	$38.75 per hour
Mechanic 32 salaries reported	$30.30 per hour
Entry level associate 185 salaries reported	$18.00 per hour
Diesel mechanic 4 salaries reported	$28.75 per hour

Working at Boart Longyear: Company Overview and Reviews

Boart Longyear

Boart Longyear Ratings

Popular jobs at Boart Longyear

Salary Satisfaction

Job Seeker Tools

Employer Tools

Browse

Stay Connected