RoadHand is a mobile and web app built for traveling trades workers. It combines contractor reviews, real pay data, OSHA safety scores, and worker-reviewed housing — so welders, linemen, pipefitters, and other tradespeople can evaluate jobs and job sites before committing.

Where does RoadHand's pay data come from?

RoadHand combines government data (BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, Davis-Bacon prevailing wage determinations, and GSA per diem rates) with anonymous pay reports submitted by workers on actual projects. Users can compare real take-home against market and prevailing-wage benchmarks.

How do OSHA safety scores work?

Safety scores are auto-generated from OSHA enforcement inspection data, covering 50,000+ federal inspections. Each contractor gets a rolling safety record including serious violations, repeat offenses, and enforcement history.

Yes. Viewing contractor reviews, pay data, housing listings, and government wage benchmarks is free for workers. Property hosts pay a flat $199/year to list housing — no booking fees, no commission.

Traveling trades workers in industrial construction — welders, linemen, pipefitters, ironworkers, electricians, crane operators, millwrights, boilermakers, heavy equipment operators, and industrial mechanics. Also property owners near job sites who want to list housing to verified tradespeople.

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This Week’s Top-Reported Pay Packages on RoadHand

The heaviest RoadHand pay packages this week: base rates pushing into the mid-$40s/hr with $150/day per diem and OT stacking serious weekly totals.

ROADHAND DATA TEAMJuly 17, 2026

How we’re pulling this week’s top packages

This isn’t BLS spreadsheet math or HR brochure numbers. It’s worker-reported pay from hands using RoadHand’s pay tools and anonymous reports, plus spot checks against public wage data where it helps sanity‑check the ranges.

Numbers below are ranges, not guarantees. When you see “reports show,” that’s travel hands talking about what they’re actually taking home, not shop-floor medians.

For hard baselines, hit:

National BLS breakdowns by trade: /wages/national/<trade>
State-level cuts: /wages/<state>/<trade>
Local field intel: /area/<city-slug>

1. Fab & high‑spec electrical – the top of the board

On high-spec fab pours and semiconductor projects, RoadHand reports show electricians running roughly $32–45/hr base plus $100–150/day per diem, with OT common on pours and shutdowns.[2]

When you stack a schedule like that:

Base: mid‑$30s to mid‑$40s/hr
Per diem: $100–150/day tax‑free
OT: 6–7 day weeks during critical path windows

It’s not unusual to see effective weekly gross climbing well north of typical BLS medians for electricians, even though the official national medians sit much lower on paper.

If you want to benchmark against the baseline for your trade, start at /wages/national/electrician and compare your job’s package to the RoadHand reports from Phoenix fabs at /blog/electrician-pay-phoenix-semiconductor-fab-2026.[2]

2. Union heavy-mech – pipefitters on scale

On union heavy-mech, one of the cleanest examples we’ve got is Charleston, WV pipefitters:

UA Local 29 combo classification: about $34.54/hr base + $10.32/hr fringe, for roughly $44.86/hr all‑in according to their posted scale.[5]
Non‑union shops in the same area land closer to the mid‑$20s/hr.[5]

That’s a classic union vs. shop split we see all over the country: scale hands on industrial and petrochemical work in the low‑to‑mid‑$40s/hr all‑in, shop side in the low‑$20s.

If you’re lining up travel into union petrochem or power work, compare your local’s scale to Charleston’s breakdown at /blog/pipefitter-pay-wv-2026-petrochemical.[5] Then check your baseline for pipefitters at /wages/national/pipefitter.

3. General travel packages – the “sweet spot” this week

Across trades – welders, fitters, electricians, operators, ironworkers – this week’s top‑reported travel packages on RoadHand are clustering in a familiar lane:

Base: typically low‑$30s to mid‑$40s/hr for experienced hands on big industrial and energy jobs
Per diem: $100–175/day, with a lot of packages hugging the GSA‑style baselines or nudging above in high‑cost metros
Schedule: 55–70 hours a week on big outages, new fab builds, and heavy civil

For context, federal GSA per diem outside designated high‑cost cities sits at $178/day total (around $110 lodging, $68 meals & incidentals) for FY2026, and many reported packages this week are at or above that level in hot basins.

The punchline: when you stack a $35–40/hr base, a $125–150/day per diem, and a 60‑hour week, you’re in “serious weekly gross” territory, well beyond the typical BLS median for most trades.

Use /pay/submit to anonymously log your current package and help tighten these weekly reports.

4. How this compares to BLS medians and local baselines

To keep our top‑end packages honest, we watch how they sit against official medians:

National plumbers are around low‑$30s/hr median according to 2024 BLS OEWS data, with top metros like Kennewick–Richland, WA reportedly pushing into the upper‑$40s/hr range.[1]
Oklahoma carpenters sit around $22.95/hr median, with the top 10% above $36.58/hr on BLS numbers.[3]
Highway maintenance workers in top metros such as San Jose are posted around the mid‑$30s/hr mean.[7]

Compare that to what our traveling trades report this week:

Top RoadHand travel packages are routinely above those state and metro medians, especially once you add per diem and OT.
Even “mid‑tier” travel jobs this week are landing near or above the top 10% BLS numbers for several trades once you factor the whole package.

For your own calibration:

Hit /wages/national/<trade> for the official median
Then weigh your current offer against worker‑reported ranges in articles like /blog/electrician-pay-phoenix-semiconductor-fab-2026 and /blog/pipefitter-pay-wv-2026-petrochemical[2][5]

5. Why some hands are still stuck in the low‑$20s

Not every package this week is fireworks:

Shop and local residential work: still widely sitting in the low‑$20s to mid‑$20s/hr range in many states, tracking BLS medians for carpenters, helpers, and basic maintenance.[3][7]
Small handyman operations: national data show averages around the high‑$20s/hr, with ranges from the high teens into the upper‑$50s for top solo operators.[10]

Hands staying home on straight‑time shop work are mostly tied to those medians. Hands chasing travel, big per diem, and heavy OT are the ones showing up in this week’s top RoadHand packages.

If your package looks closer to the BLS median than the travel ranges above, it’s time to price out:

Another basin at /area/<city-slug>
Another contractor at /contractor

6. Send in your numbers

These weekly field reports only work if hands keep feeding the pipe.

If you’re on a package that looks like:

Base in the low‑$30s to mid‑$40s/hr
Per diem $100–175/day
OT bringing you north of 60 hours

Log it, anonymously, at /pay/submit. That’s how we keep this heat map honest and keep lowball offers from looking “normal” on paper.

Next week’s report will pull the same way: top‑reported worker packages nationwide, checked against /wages/national/<trade> and local scales, no fluff, no invented numbers.