Don't Keep Drilling Jobs, Skills to Yourself

For someone who has a lot of industry smarts, it doesn’t take long to put those ideas onto paper.

You’re proud of what you do, right?

Of course you are. You’ve worked hard to get where you are, whether you work as a driller’s apprentice or you run a bit manufacturer with millions in revenue. That pride drove you to make the choices that got you where you are. That pride gets you up in the morning to do it again.

Why not share those jobs or skills you take pride in with National Driller’s thousands of readers? Other industry pros do, why not you?

I can give you a few reasons to be part of the National Driller conversation, but first I want to talk about the ways readers can contribute.

Interesting jobs make interesting feature stories. Did you just finish a job so interesting that you can’t wait to tell your buddies about it over beers? That’s the kind of story readers like to read. Of course, “interesting” is in the eye of the beholder (or, um, beer-holder), so let me give a few examples.

A jobsite in an odd or exotic location is interesting. Maybe you drill in the Atacama Desert. Maybe Antarctica. Maybe the rig that had enough power to do the job had to be disassembled to get to the jobsite by helicopter airlift. You get the idea.

Jobs where drillers had to apply special skills or troubleshooting to solve a problem are interesting. Did you build a special tool for a heroic fishing job, saving your boss a bundle of money? That counts. Did you get creative and jury rig some crazy machine out of rebar to pull a pump? That too.

A job where you encounter something you haven’t seen before, like an old buried boxcar or shipwreck — yeah, that too.

A job you’ve done — and heard done — a 1,000 times before, not so much.

Column submissions can share expertise from just about any corner of the drilling trades. Are you an ace pump installer? Tell readers what pitfalls to avoid. Have you been a mud man for 20 years? Give readers some pro tips. Do friends call you with questions about foam drilling? That’s a column. Have you made the jump from water wells to oil & gas or geothermal? What did you learn that readers could benefit from?

National Driller has plenty of opportunities in its pages. New products and other vital news items about companies we cover go in our Bulletin Board section every month. Send in news releases and, if we can’t get them in print, they’ll go online at www.thedriller.com or in our eNewsletters.

Have a great photo of your current job? Stop by www.thedriller.com/drillersatwork and submit your photo to our online gallery. Some of those photos could even end up in print on our Parting Shot page.

So, why would you do all this? I’ll say up front that I can’t promise riches beyond your wildest dreams. I can’t even promise pay. But I can promise attention. It’s a chance to crow from the rooftops to our readers — your industry peers — about that cool contract your company just finished. It’s an opportunity to share those skills rolling around in your head like marbles, before you lose them. Heck, you can even clip the article out of the magazine and send it to your mom. Isn’t the respect and adoration of more than 20,000 readers and your mom worth it?

I thought so.

Give us story ideas. Submit a story or column. Get in touch to talk about being part of National Driller. Email verduscoj@bnpmedia.com.

Stay safe out there, drillers.

Jeremy Verdusco worked as Editorial Director for The Driller from late 2012 through early 2024. He’s worked in publishing since 1997, including stints as a reporter, copy editor, page designer and technical writer.