Greenville's RoadDogJobs helps find the nation's infrastructure-builders

Matching employers with workers for skilled-trade jobs was getting difficult, so the website RoadDogJobs rose up from a Facebook group that now serves 190,000 workers and 45 companies.

Herb Dew IV bought the company in summer 2021 in hopes of making the process of matching job seekers and employers as painless as possible, knowing that many traditional job boards mainly cater to traditional workers.

Dew describes himself as a facilitator and the website akin to traditional job seeker/finder sites, except it’s tailor-made for workers seeking jobs that take them across the country for heavy industrial work. Much like traveling nurses, there’s a large pool of skilled tradesmen who travel the country for jobs.

The job seeker

Many of the jobs that Dew’s company posts are 6-12 months, and candidates can work anywhere from 40-80 hours per week. He said the jobs that post 80-hour work weeks are the most competitive, as that allows the worker to make as much money possible. But he said the job seeker is as varied as the job postings on the website.

“It’s a unique workforce,” he said.

Employers like Integrated Power Systems, Kodiak Labor Solutions, Ameri-Force and Compentia are some of the most prolific posters on the site, and Dew said the more jobs posted, the better the deal the company gets for the job listing.

One of the unique features of the website is that it posts the typical number of hours per week, along with a per diem allotment for housing and the expected time of the project. Dew said many workers spend six to 12 months on the road per year making as much money as they can at each project.

Dew also noted the wide range of workers’ lifestyles, with some being single, but many bringing families along in trailers and campers as they move from job to job. The benefits, like the jobs, tend to be varied, mostly based on the employer and the length of the job. The jobs are almost exclusively hourly.

Dew brings plenty of human resource experience, as he worked in HR for TEi Construction Services for 10 years before buying the website from Roger and Rebecca Overholtzer. His father, Herb Dew III, is president of HTI, a prominent HR company working with a number of companies around the Upstate.

Dew sees the website as contributing to the very future of the country, as many of the jobs contribute to infrastructure-building. And he wants to make sure that job seekers are getting the best opportunities possible. The pay range on the jobs runs from about $20 to $50 per hour.

“We’re trying to make that experience better,” Dew said.