Recommended Publications

Shorebased
1

I’ve been sailing on tankers for a few years and am becoming interested in some of the shoreside aspects, specifically chartering and brokering. I’m looking for one or two professional publications to at least get me started and provide a good understanding of the basic foundation of things. Huber’s Cornell Maritime Press “Tanker Operations” mentions the Intertanko “A Guide to Tanker Charters” and I’ve come across a few others as well. Being that these books tend to cost more than a few pretty pennies, I’m wondering if someone offer some recommendations before I make a bad purchase.

Thanks in advance.

2

I expect someone here knows. Maybe this thread just got buried…

3

I have never sailed tankers or been in the shoreside chartering and brokering business but I would check out www.witherbyseamanship.com

They are a UK based bookseller with many excellent maritime/nautical books, some of them even in an e- book format. I have purchased hard copy and e-books from them before and they were well written and pertinent to the subject matter.

4

‘ISGOTT’ is good, though very expensive. Sometimes people get fortunate online like at ebay.com & half.com, saw one that was bid & sold for about $40.

5

Lloyds Maritime Academy (distance learning)

6

[I]Maritime Economics[/I] 2nd ed.
by Martin Stopford.

This is a great overview of how the dry / wet trades work and what Owners, opeators and charterers are thinking about, including new buildings.

Mandatory reading for going ashore in a deep sea management position.

Available at Amazon (used) for considerable discount.

7

I’ll second Martin Stopford. He’s Super smart and perceptive guy, but very readable (which is atypical for an economist).

Probably the best first source is to subscribe to the Journal of Commerce. http://www.joc.com/ Its the Wall Street Journal of the shipping industry.

8

Thanks for the suggestions fellas! I will check them out. Got busy with some other things and put this on the back burner, but coming back around to it.

Has anyone by chance taken or heard anything about the ASBA certificate courses on brokering and chartering? Worth it at all? I’d like to make a seminar or two but I’ve always been at sea. They do have an intro home study course which might suit a shipping-out schedule, but its $1300. Seems steep.

9

Very expensive. Plus they often require you to test in London. Ask me how I know.

10

Wafinator: for any text always check if there is a PDF file of any book you are looking for floating around the web.

11

I think CMP Has a text like “Business of Shipping” don’t have it in front if me, but its a great tour of basically all the aspects of the shoreside industry.

12

If you find one that explains the economics of the tanker charter business, let me know. I am still trying to figure out how runs like loading 200,000 bbls of 6FO at Shell Martinez, discharging it all in Long Beach, shifting to another dock in LA/LB, loading another 200,000 BBLs of 6FO and taking it to Shell Martinez made any economic sense. I’ve concluded that there’s a lot about the spot commodities market I don’t know, and the cost of shipping is a very small component of the consumer cost.

13

Like running product to Israel from corpus and then back loading? It all makes sense…just like importing ethanol!

14

[QUOTE=z-drive;113543]Like running product to Israel from corpus and then back loading? It all makes sense…just like importing ethanol![/QUOTE]

Kind of makes anyone saying “Boycott [[I]insert name of oil company[/I]] by not going to their gas stations” look a little foolosh and/or naive…

15

I can’t count the number discharges and back loads of the same product we used to do in NY harbor between the same 3 terminals. Always made me scratch my head. To us it seemed like a colossal waste of time and money, but I suppose somewhere someone is profiting or else it wouldn’t be happening. Kinda what started my interest too, I’ll let you know.

16

[QUOTE=“jdcavo;113534”]If you find one that explains the economics of the tanker charter business, let me know. I am still trying to figure out how runs like loading 200,000 bbls of 6FO at Shell Martinez, discharging it all in Long Beach, shifting to another dock in LA/LB, loading another 200,000 BBLs of 6FO and taking it to Shell Martinez made any economic sense. I’ve concluded that there’s a lot about the spot commodities market I don’t know, and the cost of shipping is a very small component of the consumer cost.[/QUOTE]

I don’t know I’d this applies to the boat you are talking about but in the Delaware River and New York shell had tug/barge units on charter that got the same day rate whether they sat at anchor or hauled cargo.

If it doesn’t cost them anything more than the fuel to run the tug then why not move 200,000 for the stupidest reason?

17

Where could I find terrestrial navigation books to study up on?

18

[QUOTE=jdcavo;113549]Kind of makes anyone saying “Boycott [[I]insert name of oil company[/I]] by not going to their gas stations” look a little foolosh and/or naive…[/QUOTE]

You can also read the first two chapters of [I]“Oil On The Brain”[/I] by Lisa Margonelli if you want to discover how useless boycotting individual gas stations is [Spoiler Alert: All stations - with a few exceptions - buy gas from the same refinery… whichever is selling it cheapest]

Also working on a product tanker taught me there is no such thing as mid-grade… the pump just mixes regular and premium.