As many of you know, western ND is experiencing a huge oil boom atm. It's like a modern day Deadwood out there. Truckers are making 6 figures. Strippers are making 2-4k a night. McDonald's is hiring for $15/hr. with $500 sign on bonuses. Rent for apartments is ridiculous and farmers are even renting out all their available farm yard space to people with campers. There is a huge shortage of police, etc.

I'm a small business owner on the other side of the state and have been wanting to come up with some solid ideas for taking advantage of that situation. I don't have a ton of cash or capital since I just started the business I own 5 years ago so buying an oil rig or anything like that is unfortunately not possible. I assume most of the real estate, etc. is sky high too.

ITT we discuss ideas on making $$ out of the situation other than just getting a job trucking or something. What would you do if you lived nearby? My buddy has already brought up the organized prostitution stuff lol. I don't want to spend any of my life in jail though.

i've got a buddy who is probably going to be heading out there next month to check out the scene there and see what opportunities there are. definitely interested to hear if anyone else has any insight.

for people who aren't familiar with the OP, maybe start with this NYT article: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/21/us/21ndakota.html

selling food? going to work sites or there camp sites

It's been a while since I read this, but I saw that people were living in their cars that were parked at Walmart there while making $100,000+. Might be worth it to ship in some trailers and sell them for disgusting high prices.

yea this is what i had read as well, people are renting out 1BR trailers for insane prices too.

What about opening up a sports bar or a strip club? I am not sure how much time these guys have off but I bet when they are off they spend big.....

i believe i read somewhere about montana bar and restaurant owners coming to ND to open new locations and crushing. from what i've read it just sounds like an environment where almost any business you can open is going to do great right now.

Yeah I wonder how much you could get for a used 5th wheel up there right now. Someone should put an ad on Craiglist, put a ridiculus price on it, and see if it moves. It might be profitable to buy 5th wheels in other parts of the country and drive them to ND.

I wonder how much you could get for something like this up in Williston right now?

http://cosprings.craigslist.org/ctd/2769102749.html

These guys are on shift rotations so if they have a truck they can leave the area and go pick one of these up easy. So not sure how much you could make.

The fight for housing in this region is unbelievable - probably the only thing even slightly holding back growth. Companies continue piling into the area and the unprecedented warm weather this winter has added more than two months to the normal outdoor work season. Amazing really how the growth has continued.

It's probably the same as some of the oil regions/towns in Canada. Yes, people are making 100K doing menial jobs, but are faced with 3K/month for a bunk bed in shared housing facility and everything else is expensive as well. The sparter ones know this won't last forever and things will slowly balance out. The guys sleeping in their cars at Walmart are tying to make a quick buck with the local expenses and get out when prices and incomes fall back in line.

Absolutely silly money. My dad works in sales for a Camping World dealer. They ship a couple units a month from Michigan out to the oil workers. Until they figure out better housing, the demand isn't going to dry up any time soon.

I'm in Bismarck trying to figure out the same thing OP. Campers are renting for $1k a month. Any land you find open to put a business on you won't be able to afford. Liquor license is not going to be affordable when one opens up. There's a car audio place that is booked up through 2015. Not sure what your business entails but it's a gold mine for most any business. As you know, Williston surpassed Fargo in sales tax revenue last year. Starting a trucking company is a gamble, there is just no place to get it in if you need repairs. There's money out there to be made, the hard part is figuring out which route to go. It's the new wild west that's for sure.

Yeah I've been thinking about it for a few weeks now. I don't really want to have to live there lol. A bar would be pretty sweet though because it's mostly that type of crowd. There are probably some awesome poker game opportunities there too heh. I was thinking of looking into the liquor license process out there and stuff but was going to talk to some friends about possibly investing first. I'm thinking of heading out there to check it out once it warms up and I could get some early season camping in too.

The bars are at max capacity so if you can get one going you will kill it.

http://www.wday.com/event/article/id/58587/

There's a podcast from a few days ago interviewing some business owners out there, if you haven't heard it yet, it's a little over an hour.

Everyone is killing it because they got in pre-boom at pre-boom prices.

Starting anything now, has extraordinary costs associated with it.

The question of this thread is how to capitalize on the extraordinary gains, without running into extraordinary costs... Like selling campers...