How to Plan Crew Housing for This Work
Planning housing for utility Line and Storm Restoration Crews comes down to four questions: the headcount sleeping on site, the expected length of the assignment, the electrical capacity available at the pad, and delivery access for a truck and trailer. The sections below work through each question in order.
How we deliver a crew housing trailer to a storm staging yard
Hurricane calls usually come in 1 to 4 days before landfall, once the forecast track becomes reliable. Ice storms and derechos give far less warning, sometimes less than 24 hours. We ask your storm team to share staging addresses early, even before the order is final. Addresses can change. Finding available trailers two days after landfall is much harder than moving a delivery that is already scheduled.
Road rules can change during a declared emergency, because the FMCSA often issues a regional declaration once a governor or FEMA declares one. That declaration relaxes certain hours of service rules for trucks providing direct assistance to the relief effort. That general rule covers many kinds of relief hauling beyond utility work. Our dispatchers check the current declaration for each route before a truck leaves the lot.
Staging yards stay busy around the clock, with bucket trucks and material trailers moving at every hour of the day and night. We park sleeper trailers at the quiet edge of the yard, well away from the fuel point and the main truck lane. Your yard lead picks the spot, and our driver sets each trailer level on firm ground so the doors close properly and all 12 bunks stay steady.
The trailer is designed for sleeping only, with no bathroom or shower inside. Plan restroom and shower trailers a short, well-lit walk from the bunks, sized to the same head count. Power comes from yard service or a generator large enough to run 3 AC units at once on a hot afternoon. When the last crews release, call (888) 828-7765 with the date, and we will schedule the pickup. Pickup is quick.
- Staging yard address, or a map pin for remote line sites
- A photo of the gate and the approach road
- A flat, firm spot away from the fuel point and truck lanes
- Yard power, or a generator sized for 3 AC units
- Where the restroom and shower trailers will sit
- A yard contact with a cell number for delivery day
- Your estimated release date
How many sleeper trailers a storm or line crew needs
| Scenario | Crew size | Trailers |
|---|---|---|
| Tree clearing crew | 8 to 12 people | 1 trailer |
| Substation crew | Up to 12 people | 1 trailer |
| Transmission crew | 20 people | 2 trailers |
| Mutual assistance contingent | 24 people | 2 trailers |
| Storm staging yard | 36 people | 3 trailers |
| Large storm yard | 60 people | 5 trailers |
| 40 line crews plus support | 150 to 200 people | 13 to 17 trailers |
The math starts with 12 bunks per trailer, so divide the number of workers sleeping on site by 12 and round up to the next whole trailer. A 20-person transmission crew needs 2 trailers, and the 4 spare bunks fill quickly with a visiting mechanic or a safety coordinator. A 36-person storm contingent needs 3 trailers, while a 60-person yard needs 5 trailers with no spare bunks at all. Round up, always.
Shift length explains why beds close to the work matter so much. A crew working a 14- to 16-hour storm shift has only 8 to 10 hours left for everything else, including meals and the drive. Put that crew in a hotel 45 minutes away, and 90 minutes of those precious hours disappear into traffic every day. Housing at the yard turns those 90 minutes back into sleep.
Some storm teams hot-bunk, where a day crew and a night crew share the same 12 bunks across two 12-hour shifts, so a 12-bunk trailer covers 24 workers. It works as a temporary stopgap during the first days of a fast-growing response, while additional trailers are still on the highway. For a long push, we recommend a dedicated bunk for every worker, so each person keeps personal storage and a consistent bed.
Line work safety rules that shape a crew housing plan
Safety on a line job belongs to the utility and the contractor directing the work. Crew housing sits inside that safety program, so we follow your site plan on every delivery. Plans change. When the yard layout shifts in the middle of a storm response, we relocate the trailers to match it. Your safety lead keeps the final word on placement.
OSHA 29 CFR 1926 Subpart V covers electric power transmission and distribution work. It holds 19 numbered standards, from personal protective equipment to work on exposed energized parts and grounding for employee protection. OSHA also names utility operations among the outdoor jobs in its guidance on worker fatigue and heat exposure. That guidance stresses scheduled rest breaks and plenty of water for crews working long days in the heat.
Federal hours of service rules treat utility work differently too, since drivers of utility service vehicles get a 24-hour restart instead of the standard 34-hour restart. During adverse driving conditions, the rules allow up to 2 extra hours behind the wheel. Those same drivers often begin the day in the dark, which is one more reason to keep beds near the trucks.
Many utilities and contractors write their own work and rest guidelines on top of that federal baseline. Your storm plan may cap shift length or require a set number of rest hours between shifts. Beds at the yard make those limits easier to keep, because rest hours stop leaking into a 45-minute commute. A 16-hour shift plus a 90-minute round trip leaves less than 7 hours for sleep, before anyone eats a meal. Tell us your rest policy, and we will place the trailers to support it.
- OSHA 29 CFR 1926 Subpart V: Sets safety rules for electric power transmission and distribution work, including protective equipment and work near energized parts.
- FMCSA hours of service, 49 CFR Part 395: Limits driving hours and gives utility service vehicle drivers a 24-hour restart.
- FMCSA regional emergency declarations: Can relax some trucking rules for vehicles giving direct help in a declared emergency.
- NERC reliability standards: Mandatory grid reliability rules enforced through six regional entities, including WECC and Texas RE.
- Utility and contractor work and rest policies: Internal limits on shift length and rest time that your own storm plan sets.
Hotel rooms versus portable sleeper trailers for storm crews
Most traveling line crews sleep in hotels paid through per diem or direct billing. GSA sets per diem rates by the location of the work, not the hotel, unless lodging is not available at the work site. GSA updates those rates every August for the new federal fiscal year. In a storm zone, that exception quickly becomes the normal case. Commutes grow. Rooms near the damage fill within hours, and crews end up 45 minutes or more away from the staging yard.
Disaster survivors need those same rooms, and FEMA's Transitional Sheltering Assistance program places families whose homes cannot be lived in at local hotels. FEMA checks eligibility again every 14 days, so those families can stay for weeks. Crews and survivors end up competing for the same small set of beds, and the crews usually lose the drive time.
Large third-party camps are the other option, and they work well during big oilfield booms like the Bakken. Even so, a camp can sit far from your staging yard, and your crew shares it with workers from other companies. The camp also sets its own rules on visitors and quiet hours, which your foreman does not control. Your yard, your rules. Plenty of other trades face the same tradeoff, and you can compare their setups on our page of crew housing for other industries.
- 31+ hrs on the road per worker over a 21-day storm push, at 45 minutes each way
- 630 hotel room nights for 60 workers, 2 to a room, over 21 nights
- 5 trailers sleep the same 60 workers at your own staging yard, 1 bunk each
- 14 days between FEMA eligibility checks for families living in local hotels
Three job types, three typical trailer plans, the short version
Typical setup: Gulf Coast hurricane staging yard, 36-person crew contingent, September
A typical job like this starts with a call from a utility storm logistics manager about 2 days before a hurricane makes landfall on the Gulf Coast. The staging yard is often a county fairground, and every hotel within 40 minutes is already booked. Three trailers go to the back edge of the fairground and are cooled before the first crews roll in. The crews can work 16-hour days for 18 straight days at that fairground without a commute. When the yard releases, all 3 trailers can be picked up in one morning.
Typical setup: transmission line build in the desert Southwest, 24-person crew, July
On a transmission build like this, a line contractor is pulling wire on a new line in southern Arizona during the hottest part of summer. The closest open hotel rooms are often more than an hour from the material yard. Two air-conditioned trailers sit at the yard, clear of the wire reels and the crane. The crew starts at 4 in the morning and sleeps through the 110-degree afternoons while the heat stays outside. When the work moves 30 miles down the line, the trailers move with it.
Typical setup: derecho cleanup in the Midwest, 20-person crew, June
On a storm job like this, a straight-line windstorm snaps poles across several Iowa counties. A contract line crew then gets the call to help. The local service center often has room for trucks but no beds. Two trailers fit on a gravel lot behind the building, with a generator sized for all 6 AC units. The crew can rebuild lines for 12 straight days on that setup and then head home. The same setup carries over to the next storm call.
