Mom here, to chat with you about the sugar beet harvest. I found out about this before we left our house, and signed up for it almost a year in advance! It was supposed to be good money with lots of overtime.
There are several different companies that hire for the sugar beet harvest. I worked for Express Employment, and overall, they were a good company to work for. Pay in 2022 was $18.25/hour, I think, which is better than I’ve ever been paid at a job before (I made more money self-employed, though).
Express Employment hires for a few different sugar beet harvest locations, and I chose eastern North Dakota. They also hire in Montana, but their availability of RV parks is limited so they prefer couples there. Since someone needed to watch our kids, I was the only one working and requested the Red River Valley.
Sugar beet harvest perks
Not only is the pay decent, but it comes with a full hook-up RV spot. We were assigned a spot at Governor’s RV Park, which was pretty great for what it was. (We are very much not RV park people, much preferring boondocking in the middle of nowhere.) I looked briefly at their monthly rates for RVs, and it was around $1500!! When you add the spot for our rig, my pay is looking pretty awesome indeed!
Another awesome perk of working the sugar beet harvest for Express Employment is that it comes with what they call Stay Pay. The harvest is dependent on the weather, so while I committed to the month of October, there were several days at the beginning of the month that were too warm. The beets need to be around 40-60F to be piled; too warm, and they just rot. If they are frozen, that’s not good either.
However, Express Employment paid us for 4 hours for every day we just had to be there. This meant that while we were exploring the Red River Zoo, the Hjemkomst Center, and the waterpark, I was getting paid nearly $100/day – plus that spot for our RV! Not bad for a day of fun.
Overtime pay
Express Employment is also great at paying overtime. Each scheduled day was 12 hours long, which meant we got 8 hours of regular pay and 4 hours of time-and-a-half. Except for Saturdays, which were time-and-a-half all day, and Sundays were double time all day. That was the other reason I wanted this location; the overtime pay was better.
While I do feel I was compensated very fairly for my time, the harvest went too quickly this year to actually make it worthwhile for us. The harvest got done on October 13th after less than a week of full days. There were other locations I could have continued at, but none were close, and it was starting to get quite cold by then.
Working the sugar beet harvest
The harvest itself was not bad. I was placed in the weigh house, which meant I was inside a somewhat climate-controlled area. I got to sit down during my long shifts, and could pretty much do anything I wanted in between checking trucks in and out. I worked on our blogs, watched Netflix, read books, and played Sudoku.
Most people get hired as sample takers and helpers. These individuals have to stand on hard concrete in the weather for their entire shift. While most of the time we had reasonably decent weather, it did get quite brutally cold at the end of the harvest. Some mornings and nights we even had to cut open beets to make sure they weren’t frozen.
I told my husband that if we find ourselves in the area, I wouldn’t be opposed to working the sugar beet harvest again. Basically, if we spend a summer workamping in North Dakota or Minnesota. But there just wasn’t enough work to justify driving halfway across the country.
Express Employment also hires for Digi-key. Digi-key is in a similar area as the beet harvest, and Express Employment will even hire you for Digikey, let you take the month of October off for the sugar beet harvest, then go back to Digi-key! If you’re wanting to work hard and make good money, it’s hard to beat working for Express Employment.