There west coast fleet is all over 30 years old except for a couple of boats they got when they bought smith maritime.
[QUOTE=Cal;72690] Two K-Sea boats that been sold to some company in Nigeria. They sat there for months because the USCG determined that neither the vessels, nor the crews brought over to take them to Africa, were sea worthy.[/QUOTE]
Actually a little different. All the vessels were purchased here, and the exporter (who turned out to be a strawman for Chinese corporations) had applied for an export license for all of it as SCRAP. The EPA got involved because to be exported as scrap everything had to be certified lead free, pollution free etc etc etc. So they had to re apply for an export license as operating vessels.
Being ‘seaworthy’ had nothing to do with it. All this old crap was sent to Nigeria on heavy lift ship.
In hind sight, I wonder why McA didn’t snatch some of this stuff up. Some of it is newer than some of the old crap they are running now!
Dont give them any ideas!!
[QUOTE=KennyW1983;72723]Dont give them any ideas!![/QUOTE]
Interesting…I am not too up on the towing companies in the NE so wondering who is the “Cinderella” outfit to work for up there? Kinda the Foss Maritime up your way?
Honestly I don’t think there is one! Each company has its strong points and weak ones. Depends upon what type towing you are looking at. And if you can accept being Union or not. As much as it pains me, the absolute best looking tug and barge units are Bouchard. BUT working FOR Bouchard is like asking for a weekly impacted wisdom tooth. For general towage and assist work I would have to say Moran. For exclusive petroleum transport OSG is pretty high up there. Both ships and tugs. As far a small professionally run family owned tug companies, both Reinauer and Vane Bros. Are pretty good. But the two headed bull in the China shop is definitely Bouchard. Too bad Morty is running it!
The two K-Sea units did sail to Nigeria. Not sure about the customs end of it but they had 2-3 crews quit the day of sailing because they where expected to sail across the winter North Atlantic and bunker off the barge they where towing. The Rienauer & Allied tugs/ barges where sent via heavy lift.
Moran doesnt do to much non-oil barge towing anymore. McAllister will tow anything they can win a contract on but a rumor I have heard more than once is that all contract bids have to be cleared with Mac of NYC before being sent in and Mac of NYC doesnt care so much for non-oil tow work. For example Norfolk will bid on, say a Brownsville scrap tow, the bid has to be cleared by Mac of NYC before being sent on. Mac of NYC will say you arent bidding high enough, Norfolk raises the price and loses the contract to Tradewinds, Dann Ocean, etc, etc.
You’re saying New York City can tell a company that it’s not bidding enough for a contract? If so explain why.
[QUOTE=Jemplayer;72762]You’re saying New York City can tell a company that it’s not bidding enough for a contract? If so explain why.[/QUOTE]
I edited my post, I meant McAllister of NYC, sorry.
I guess its kind of obvious I work for Mac, I was using our short hand for Mac HQ.
Back them most of the N.Y. Companies had older fleets. Turecamo, who I worked for, had the nicest looking boats but their maintenance was lacking also. Hell, I think I worked only worked on a couple of Tugs that had A/C before I went to Maritrans (OSG now) in 1990. For that matter most of the Tugs were still DC.
In the 80’s my Father was Marine Superintendent for Red Star, right after Hess bought them out, a company contacted him and wanted to sell them a Preventive Maintenance Program. His response was we need a Maintenance Program first.
McAllister has been run down for sometime now. For a long time they were just barely keeping the doors open.
We (Turecamo) and McAllister used to take turns towing for Bouchard. It seemed like Morty would get a bug up his ass and tell whoever had the work at the time to stop and along came a tug from the other company. This would happen every couple of months between Turecamo and McAllister.