RoadTechs vs RoadDog Jobs vs Energy Job Shop for contractors

For an electrical travel job on industrial or heavy commercial work, RoadDog Jobs is the closest fit. RoadTechs fits power, transmission, nuclear and plant outage work. Energy Job Shop is the cheapest test, since its employers page lists a free basic listing. None of the three will fill a post that leaves out the rate, the per diem and how long the job runs.

Prices below come from each board's own pages as of October 2026. Boards change prices and run sales, so confirm before you buy.

01The three boards side by side

RoadTechs adds $400 for each extra board on an annual plan and $200 on a quarterly plan, and its rate page lists one quarterly line that reads as a full year, so confirm the term. RoadDog lists Silver, Gold and Platinum boosts at 2X, 3.5X and 5X visibility with no prices shown.

Every board in this table is a tool for reaching travelers. The cluster's main guide covers the rest of the channels: every place to find journeyman electricians.

02What each board is

Each of the three serves a different slice of traveling hands, so the right one depends on the work.

RoadDog Jobs

RoadDog Jobs calls itself "the top job board for industrial construction," with the headline "Jobs for Traveling Construction Hands." Electrician sits next to welder, pipefitter, millwright and ironworker in its featured trades, and it runs per diem job pages by state. That's its own pitch, but the trades it features match a lot of plant and heavy commercial work.

Posting costs $250 for a single 14-day post. The flexible plan, where you add and pull posts as you like, starts at $720 a month. Bulk plans for 50 to 500 posts and its résumé search have no price listed. You can try it free for 14 days without a card.

RoadTechs

RoadTechs says it's "run by workers for workers" and that hands have been coming to it since 1997. Its boards split by industry: nuclear, petro-chem, transmission and distribution, construction, shipyard and more. It also keeps a nuclear outage schedule and a petro-chem turnaround list, and emails a daily HotSheet of new posts. It says "well over 15,000 workers a day" visit, a number we can't check.

Pricing is per board. An annual unlimited plan is $995 for one board, with posts that stay up to 60 days. Quarterly unlimited is $400 for one board. A single post lists at $200, "on sale for a limited time at just $99.99." That sale was announced in October 2019 and is still listed. Its Black Book résumé search is $495 a year for five recruiter accounts.

Energy Job Shop

Energy Job Shop is an energy-industry job board. Its employers page says one basic listing is free after a review, with featured and sponsored placement priced on request. That makes it the lowest-risk test of the three: one post, no spend, and you see who answers.

Confirm the free listing terms on its employers page before you count on them. Terms like these change.

03When to use which

Match the board to the work and the hands it draws:

• Industrial plant, warehouse, data hall or heavy commercial, 3+ months: start with RoadDog Jobs.
• Substation, transmission, power plant, nuclear outage or refinery turnaround: RoadTechs, on the board for that industry. Time the post to the outage season.
• No budget yet, or testing a new region: Energy Job Shop's free listing plus RoadDog's free trial.
• Local work where hands sleep at home: none of these. Your own crew's referrals, paid social ads or a local post on Indeed fit better.
• Several kinds of work at once: watch the per-board pricing on RoadTechs. Two boards for a year is $1,395.

If you'd rather not run three boards and sort the replies yourself, apply here and we'll see if we can put 5 licensed electricians in front of you in 14 days. If we don't book you 5 in 14 days, you don't pay.

04Why travelers skip your post

Travelers skip posts that leave out the per diem amount, the job length or the rate, because those three numbers decide whether the trip pays. One national electrical contractor told us they pay for a traveling-electrician board and still came up short on hands.

A traveler reads a post like a budget:

1. Rate and hours. $44 on 6-10s is a different check than $48 on 4-10s.
2. Per diem with its unit. "$140 a day, 7 days" or "$140 per day worked." "Per diem available" gets skipped.
3. How long it runs. He's paying for a room, maybe a second place. Six weeks might not cover the move.
4. What's next. Is there another phase or another job after this one?
5. Whether his card works there. Say which licenses you accept, or link the state board.

Here's a travel post written to answer those, as an example. Use your own numbers.

Journeyman electricians, hospital tower, [City, ST]. $46 an hour, 6-10s, OT after 40. $140 a day per diem, 7 days, for hands living 75+ miles out. Runs about 8 months, rough-in through trim. Work: EMT and rigid to 4-inch, tray, feeder pulls, set gear. [State] journeyman license or one [State] accepts. OSHA 10. Text your license number and state to [number].

For setting the number, see what per diem to offer traveling electricians. For keeping the crew once they show, see how to recruit and keep a traveling crew.

05How to tell if a board is paying off

Judge a board by cost per traveler who shows up and stays, not by views or applications. Here's an example with made-up results:

• A RoadDog single post at $250 brings 2 carded travelers who start. That's $125 a hand.
• A RoadTechs quarterly plan at $400 brings 3 hires over the quarter. That's about $133 a hand.
• Energy Job Shop's free listing brings 1 hire. That's $0 a hand, plus your time.

Now compare that to renting the same hand from an agency. Say the agency bills $20 an hour over what it pays him, and he works 50 hours a week. That's $1,000 a week per hand. One week of that spread pays for any of these boards several times over.

Ask every applicant where he saw the job, and count carded hands per board. After two posting cycles with no carded travelers from a board, drop it.

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