Kirby pays the tankerman more than the engineers on the ATBs, $550/day. The engineers at Kirby are the lowest paid clowns in the circus. They built new double hull barges and push them around with 25 year old rustbuckets and stupid captains. I had a captain tell me to unhook the wires to a rented power pack gen set on deck (backup main generator). One of main generators was destroyed and in pieces. I TOLD THE NUMB-NUT CAPTAIN “I’m not sailing with one generator and 100,000 gals of gasoline and diesel under tow”. Apparently the captain had done this before when the genset was set on deck without being wired up and inadequate gauge wire to feed the switchboard. You’ll see that ATB on the front page of the Anchorage daily news someday.
I worked on a crowley ship and the captain was from Homer. He was a good seaman and was doing pilot observing time with the Anchorage pilots and saw that ATB I was previously on going through an area Marked “Boulder Field” with a loaded barge on the way into Anchorage. He told me expected to see that barge on the front page of the Times someday.