12 interesting facts about western North Dakota

[dharma]

1. Traffic accidents, especially fatal traffic accidents are of very high concern. At one location on Highway 85 south of Williston, a traffic count was conducted in October of 2011. In one 24-hour period there where 29,000 vehicles through the intersection, with 60% of the traffic being semi trailer trucks.

2. Traffic is typically backed up for ½ to ¾ of a mile. One person stated that he recently sat at an intersection on Highway 85 for 30 minutes waiting for an opening in the traffic to cross over.

3. Rents in Williston currently range from $2,000 for a one-bedroom apartment to $3,400 for a three-bedroom apartment.

4. Williams County allows three campers per farmstead, the farmers almost all have three campers on their property and are charging $800 per camper per month for rent.

5. The Walmart in Williston no longer stocks shelves, they bring out pallets of merchandise at night, and set them in the aisles, and customer shops from the pallets.

6. On January 1, the Williston Walmart had 148 campers overnight in their parking lot.

7. The Williston McDonalds just announced that they will pay new workers $15 an hour, a $500 immediate signing bonus and full medical benefits.

8. The local restaurants are full and with limited staffing, they usually just have the drive through open. The restaurants that have inside seating are now experiencing an hour wait at all times.

9. The local Motel 6 in Williston now rents rooms for $130 per night.

10. Trinity Hospital in Minot has just hired 115 nurses from the Philippines, because they cannot get enough local nurses to apply.

11. The Williston General Motors dealership has now become the No. 1 seller of Corvettes in the upper Midwest.

12. The Williams County jail has increased bookings by 150%, with a 100% increase in the inmate population. Bonds of $5,000 to $10,000 are typically paid with cash out of pocket. The Williams County Sheriff stated that a couple of weeks ago he received a $63,000 bond in cash carried into the jail in a plastic Walmart bag.

[and the most interesting fact of all: the jobless rate is less than 1% - d]

[CanadaSue]

What's driving the boom?

[Ought Six]

The Bakken oil formation. Shale oil, recovered through frakking,

[dharma]

Earn $2000 a night as a boomtown stripper. "We make more than doctors."

http://money.cnn.com/2011/10/25/pf/A...source=cnn_bin

[CanadaSue]

Damn.... if only I was 30 years younger. If only I had a body worth revealing...

if only...

[dyrt]

I have a friend that lives in the St. Paul, MN area but is working in ND. He started by working on a fracking team but now drives the truck. He is making over $150,000/yr. He is working 3 weeks with one week off. He is very suitable for the work since he is a big strong man that grew up on a farm in northern MN.

He is being recruited by a company that is in Montana doing the same thing. They offered him 75,000/yr more. They want 9 weeks work with 3 weeks off. He won't take it. Too far from his wife and home and too long on the job.

The same thing is going on southwest of San Antonio. Traffic, high rents, local property owners are making a lot of money. I think I mentioned it . . . but I know a guy, a painter, that works in San Antonio, that partnered with a rancher to put in a rustic (dirt roads, septic, electricity) trailer park. They bought a bunch of used FEMA trailers and are renting them. They are accumulating a lot of cash. The current estimate is that the whole area needs close to 10 thousand more workers.

Boom towns have been a common part of Texas life for many decades.