Halliburton truck driver pay

[Skeezix]

This war is insane. The average Iraqi in Baghdad doesn't have jack --dirt poor. But he picks up a rocket and shoots at a Halliburton truck driver who's pulling down $20,000/month. Theoretically, the truck driver is there to help the poor Iraqi guy with the rocket. You and I are paying the truck driver. It all adds up to ...insanity. What a wierd species we are!

[gotterdamerung]

Have you ever been to Iraq then? If you saw how good some of the *dirt poor* Iraqi's are living I'm sure you wouldn't be making uninformed judgements. You can walk into any town and pick up a SONY 50 inch, or buy a chicken sandwich on any corner for a few dinar. How about a nice new collared shirt or a Rolex. Yep, these *dirt poor* Iraqi's got em/ Along with Mercedez Benz, BMW and Land Cruisers. Get a clue.

 

How much is YOUR life worth? If you would want to come over and put your's on the line feel free to name your price. I'm pretty sure there are no truck drivers making that kind of cash, despite what a few media reports might have insinuated. If you also think that somehow the insurgency is justified killing American's because of the fact that they are trying to make a living in a combat site at great risk to themselves, that their families aren't worried sick everyday, and that the media would have you believing that anarchy is the order of the day then the propaganda machine has worked it's magic on you.

 

You are insane.

[snoboy]

The fact that you can buy a Rolex or a BMW, doesn't really mean jack shit to the poor, or average citizen, does it??

 

Heck, I could buy a 100 million dollar Picasso in NYC if I wanted to (I wish ), but that doesn't really mean much to the homeless guy does it?

[gotterdamerung]

The point being that there are plenty of people here doing quite well. If Iraq would pull it's head out it's ass they could be like Kuwait where the average Kuwaiti doesn't have to work because they are subsidized through oil revenue. This in turn creates more jobs for them and for other nations since the middle east is fond of importing laborers and service people from Asia.

[EWolfe]

Agree or disagree, it's nice having someone on the site for the eyes overseas.

[Off_White]

Report I heard stated 10 to 20k per month. A quick web search yields:

 

So at 60, he left Pensacola, Fla., to drive trucks in Iraq for the Halliburton Co., lured by the promise of up to $120,000 in cash, tax-free.

 

Hamill felt he could not pass up an offer from Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root for $80,000 base pay to drive a fuel truck in Iraq for a year.

 

Thousands have signed on as contract workers and stand to earn up to $120,000 tax-free for a year's work

 

and for those of you thinking this might be a good deal,

The requirements are that you need a Class A CDL with both Hazmat and Tanker endorsements, and at least 3-years OTR experience. You also need to pass our drug test, comprehensive medical exam, a 7-year criminal background check and a 5-year MVR check. You must also be eligible to get a passport (we get the passport for you). To do this you need a certified copy of your birth certificate, a non-laminated social security card, and you cannot owe any back taxes to the IRS or be behind on child support payments.

 

Sounds more like 10k a month rather than 20. Figure there are 2080 hours in the average work year, and this one will be bound to have overtime, so call it 2400 hours in the year. That's $50 per hour. Good, yes, but not amazing. It doesn't make me consider quitting my day job. Of course, tax free adds to the take home pay quite a bit.

 

I don't know what Halliburton's mark-up on this is, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's at least 50%, and probably much more. So, yeah, it's gonna cost joe taxpayer at least $200k per year per driver, not counting the truck and the fuel to run it, and nothing to the IRS to boot. It would be a lot cheaper to use regular army to drive the trucks, but I haven't gotten the impression we're awash in military personnel with nothing to do. It sucks for the taxpayer, but the push towards privatizing almost everything is hardly new, and even if folks become aware enough to reconsider this philosophy, it's not a trend that could be reversed in anything less than years. I'd guess there are many Iraqis who could be hired to do these jobs for much less money, and after all, it's their country that needs to be put back together, but what little I know suggests we have some problems determining who are the good guys and who are the bad ones.

 

The private military industry, which Gotterdamerung toils in, is another costly piece of the puzzle. I've heard there are 15,000 corporate warriors, roughly 10% of the total military force, and a larger component than any other nation besides the US provides. While this is a new concept for recent times, mercenaries have been around for thousands of years. I know the current arrangement costs a lot, but I don't have a sense of how it compares to historical costs of military-for-hire versus national forces. GD, I know you've argued that it's worth it, but do you have any numbers and history to support that argument?

 

No matter how you stack it, this will turn out to have been a very expensive proposition, and we can look forward to years of post mortem dissection of all the assumptions and decisions around how this ill advised war was waged.

[j_b]

considering that unemployment is greater than 50% and the average wage is ~$30 a month, it is a safe bet to say there are plenty of poor people in iraq. it's good to have eyes but they have to see what's there to be useful.

[gotterdamerung]

One thing that isn't taken into consideration is that contractors are not given benefits like a regular employee of a company would receive. With health insurance running rampant in this country, monthly insurance rates for a two person family can run over 500.00 a month out of pocket.

 

Likewise there is no paid vacation, overtime, weekends, sick leave, etc. With the nature of the work occuring in this environment it is also feasible to make the work day a 24 hour day since there really is no place to get away to. The living conditions are austere ( a 2 man small trailer if you are lucky-sharing a bathroom with 4 persons ), the chow is tolerable, but definitely not fine cuisine by any standards. The temps can range from about 140+ to snowing. Dust storms are frequent, and rain can turn everything into a muddy bog. A driver coming from Kuwait with a supply chain is looking at a 12-15 hour drive through some remote territory. Driving conditions are hazardous and made more so by (our standards) dangerous and erratic driving behavior. Once you get used to oncoming traffic in the lane you are going down, cars pulling off in double and triple parked areas, no traffic lights or signals and horrible congestion it strangely begins to feel sort of exhilarating to drive like a madman. This is in the cities of course and the distant outer areas are where alot of IED attacks occur. Hijackings and drive by shootings are common as well. Now they are taking hostages. A lot of those folks are never coming home. Seperation from family, friends, familiar surroundings, hobbies, and a feeling that the Grim Reaper is leering over your shoulder all the time adds to the equation. All things being considered 120K a year sounds like a lot, but there is a hellava lot that goes into earning your dollar. And we're just talking about truck drivers here. There are people with much more dangerous jobs.

 

On top of that only the first 84K is tax free AND that's ONLY if you spend 330 days out of the United States. Spend only 329 outside CONUS and you are getting hit for about 28% of your hard earned income. I would say people should be bitching about paper pushing CEO's making 7 figures for telling other people what to do, not some blue collar guy sucking sand and deisel and dodging shrapnel, while sweating it out in 30 pounds of body armor.

[gotterdamerung]

considering that unemployment is greater than 50% and the average wage is ~$30 a month, it is a safe bet to say there are plenty of poor people in iraq. it's good to have eyes but they have to see what's there to be useful.

 

If you work for the coalition you are making $7-$10 a day. The reasons for this economy were not created by the US, but by a deposed dictator. If peace ever finds it's way to Iraq you will find that their currency will trade at 3 to 1 with the US dollar and there will be great financial reward for the Iraqi people. Look at Kuwait and Qatar for examples. If you want to bitch about corruption look at Saudi Arabia where 99% of the wealth is owned by about 1% of the population and wages haven't seen an increase since about 1980. Iraq is going to take time. These things don't happen overnight.

[gotterdamerung]

I took this picture South of Baghdad on MSR Tampa in early November of last year. Doesn't exactly look like I-5...

 

Burning_Truck

[snoboy]

I dunno, I seen shit like that on the I-5.

 

I hate that damn highway...

 

I wouldn't want the truck driving job, for many reasons.

[j_b]

If you work for the coalition you are making $7-$10 a day. The reasons for this economy were not created by the US, but by a deposed dictator.

 

in part only. the country went through 3 bloody wars and 10years of sanctions since the early 80's. 2 of the wars were saddam's fault (with our help for one of the two) and we are ultimately responsible for the 3rd war and the sanctions.

 

there will be great financial reward for the Iraqi people. Look at Kuwait and Qatar for examples.

 

iraqis can achieve some of that without adopting all the models from the west. my guess is they won't want us around to get there. especially after all that has happened.

[sexual_chocolate]

During the '70's, Iraq had the highest standard of living in any middle-eastern country, sans Israel.

 

Throughout Saddam Hussein's reign, brutal certainly in many respects, education was free, including at the university level.

 

There was a small jewish community in Iraq, and I was quite surprised to hear in an interview that they had feared the removal of Hussein, since he had protected them against the antipathy of the Muslim population.

 

What a strange man, Hussein: Unimaginably brutal dictator; socialist espousing communist ideals (with haha Stalin being one of his heros); a father loved by his daughters; two sociopathic sons....

 

Sometimes I think Bush would be worse if he didn't have the constraints of our constitution hemming him in.

[EWolfe]

Those constraint may not exist with four more years

[Jason_Martin]

Sometimes I think Bush would be worse if he didn't have the constraints of our constitution hemming him in.

 

Since his goal appears to be to undermine the constitution wherever he can, I would tend to agree...

 

I don't feel too bad for truck drivers and other non-military people working in Iraq who come home to the U.S. with a huge amount of money tax free. Unlike the military personnel in Iraq these men and women have made a choice to be there and they have every right to make the choice not to be there.

 

Jason

[gotterdamerung]

Military men and women are volunteers also. Don't forget that. I told the Chaplain the truth. I like it here...getta do what you want...nobody fucks with you...

[ryland_moore]

So do "volunteers" ever work or do they just sit around on cc.com all day? Glad my tax dollars are going to such a "worthy" cause.

[stinkyclimber]

Not to deflect the line of conversation away from arguing over who's motives for being there are purer or more honorable, but...

 

Question for whoever (Gotterdamerung or others): why aren't Iraqi's being hired to fill these sorts of jobs? Is it because of security, or because because the job (driving a truck) is technically beyond the average Iraqi?

 

I mean, there must be lots of truck drivers in Iraq, and I am sure most of them are not hate-filled, Saddam-supporting terrorists. It isn't like this guy was driving a truck full of high security military equipment was it? And even if it was, wouldn't a carefully selected and supervised Iraqi fulfill the requirements as well as some guy from Florida?

 

With the unemployment rate so high, and with unemployment leading to boredom leading to crime (this is true in any country) leading to terrorism/violence, wouldn't it make more sense to do a Marshall Plan type of thing and actually employ Iraqi's to rebuild their own country? That is what the UN does, for the most part, in peace-keeping operations - any job that can be done by a local is done by a local. And as a side benefit, it is cheaper.

[JoshK]

stinky, don't be silly, how are cheney's chronies going to profit if halliburton doesn't get the contract to supply it's own overpaid truck drivers?

[stinkyclimber]

But that is what I don't get. Halliburton would make even more money if they paid local rates to local drivers. The Halliburton cronies don't give a shit, I am sure, about some truck driving schmoe from Florida.

 

The contract to provide trucking services to the US gov't must specify the use of US citizens for all jobs...otherwise, Halliburton would go with the cheapest labour possible, no?

 

So my question then is, why do these contracts, assuming they do, specify the use of US citizens for these types of blue-collar jobs? Or is the US gov't really that partisan and short-sighted that they would prefer to pork-barrel a few jobs to US workers rather than actually build a sustainable, stable, peaceful Iraq? I just don't get it - is it really that simple?...that even truck driving is politicized in this bloody war?

[Dru]

maybethey don't have the protocol in place to get the local truck drivers through undoubted security clearance issues? they haven't been too succesful in getting the local police up and running again have they?

[Skeezix]

You are insane.

Gotterdamerung --got yer dander up? I may be insane, but I was just trying to highlight the situational irony in Iraq. Another thing I wonder about is how enlisted men feel about mercenary private security personnel out-earning them 10-1 for equivalent work?

[stinkyclimber]

Yah Dru, but driving a truck full of spare parts is a little easier to not fuck up then policing an anarchy. Besides, the UN manages to hire local workers in almost equally fucked up places (Sudan, Congo, etc.). Why can't the mighty US?...is it really just because of political pork-barrelling?

[Dru]

if you drive a truck full of deisel into a building it blows up real good, no?

[Off_White]

if you drive a truck full of deisel into a building it blows up real good, no?

 

Only in the movies. Mostly, diesel would just make a mess, though you could make a big smoky fire.

 

As to Halliburton making more money with Iraqi drivers, aren't they on a cost plus contract? Presumably their profit is not a fixed number, but a percentage of the cost. High cost = higher profit. Same way it works for oil companies when the price per barrel goes up, their profit increases at the same rate.