Oil Patch Road Culture

Traveling last week east on U.S. 82 from Artesia, we noticed a few things that don’t happen in the north central urban area.
The road was two lane, but with a shoulder wide enough for trucks. In that part of the world, some trucks are heavily loaded, a function of the oil and gas business. Of necessity, they go slowly. For these trucks, driving on the shoulder offers a courtesy to other drivers, though one probably not anticipated by the highway designers. For the mostly urban driver, the apparently unusual behavior raises the question of what really is happening.
Other than the larger trucks, nearly all the vehicles on U.S. 82 are pickups, usually larger models. Nearly all these trucks are white.
While in Hobbs, we did see a couple of Halliburton staffers driving a red pickup matching their red jump suits. But the standard for Halliburton was red lettering on the side of a white pickup.