Getting a Man Camp Module
Introduction: Getting a Man Camp Module
When you read the words "man camp" one of the first things that might spring to your mind is that it's something like a man cave. Maybe a "man camp" is what a bunch of guys do on a weekend out in the woods. Until about 10 years ago I had never heard of a man camp so I had no idea. So just what is it?
A man camp is a group of buildings set up usually in a somewhat remote area that can provide temporary housing, normally including food, for a work crew. They are sometimes very mobile and sometimes more permanent. They are designed to provide a safe place to live for as long as is needed to groups of people involved in various endeavors, often construction of something like a major pipeline.
When the oil industry grew like wild fire after the discovery of the Balkan oil deposits in North Dakota and Eastern Montana the huge influx of workers that followed the boom caused a lot of logistical problems. The little city of Williston ND and several other surrounding towns did not have the resources to house all the workers that migrated in. People filled up the camp grounds and the motels and there still wasn't room. I knew a group of workers that lived in my area that commuted to their oil field jobs 120 miles away every day for 14 day shifts. They switched drivers each day so some would sleep while others took turns driving. Think about that, a 12 hour work day and a 4 hour commute. But they did get big paychecks for their efforts. Williston became the most expensive place in the US to live. A single bedroom, not an apartment, just a bedroom, could cost you over $2000 a month to rent. There were people who rented spaces in driveways so workers could sleep in their trucks, use a bathroom and then head out to work. Williston was in dire need of places for people to live. The city started passing ordinances to try and keep up with the influx of workers. You needed a permit to park a camper in a driveway, only so many people were allowed to live on a residential property. The city sanitation facilities were being overwhelmed. 121
It would take years to build enough new housing and infrastructure to accommodate the population influx, even though there was a boom going on in building also, it was way behind. Finally they passed an ordnance that required a person to have a valid place to live before they could be hired for an oil field job. If you didn't have an address you couldn't take a job.
They needed solutions and one of the solutions they turned to was man camps. Temporary housing set up quickly that could provide clean accommodations and not overwhelm the cities resources. Plans were evaluated, permits were issued, and modules started arriving. So the man camps were set up as an interim solution until the building boom could catch up.
They were put together with modules. There were bathroom modules, kitchen and dinning modules, and sleeping quarters modules. I found out that in order to accommodate the sewer problem the camps used giant holding tanks that were pumped out and then the sewage was trucked over 100 miles away to the city of Minot that had a treatment plant big enough to handle it. Imagine having a full time trucking job that paid really good and all you did was move sewage down the highway.
After several years the new apartments being built finally starting catching up to the need and at the same time the temporary man camp permits ran out. And the next thing that happened was they were all in court trying to battle out what was fair. Investors sunk a lot of capital into the new buildings and having to compete with man camps was not in the plan. Some of the camps got extensions, some were allowed to still be there but not occupied just in case they were needed again. And then the oil market busted, and things were shut down. The frantic pace slowed and many of the workers went back to where they came from and the new housing was left empty and the investors were pretty unhappy and the man camps, their competition that was supposed to be temporary was still there. Twenty five percent occupancy is pretty bad for a new apartment complex. But that was the new situation, from way to many people to way to few.
SO it was decided that the man camps had to go.
Step 1: Getting a Module
The companies that had set the camps up now had to make them disappear, return the ground to the way it had been. Many hired out that process to a salvager. The buildings and everything else was simply written off as a loss, they had no value to the company anymore. It was cheaper for them to hire someone, or a company, to clean it all up and do whatever they wanted with the building as long as it was all gone.
I had heard about the camps being dismantled but had a hard time tracking anything down. I heard some units were sold at auction, and some in private sales, most went pretty cheap. 121