This time of the year I am consumed with analyzing expenses and making budgets for the vessel operations department for 2026.
I thought some of you might be interested in seeing the relative size of the budgets. This is just for my and the port engineer’s departments. It doesn’t include home office wages, terminal wages, operation and maintenance of the home facility, etc. Just expenses related to actually operating a fleet of vessels with crews of 8 to 9, on 4,000-mile voyages in the Gulf of Alaska, Bering Sea, etc.
This is an annual budget. I won’t show actual dollar amounts. I’ll use total wages (before taxes and no benefits) as a base unit of 1 and show the other expenses relative to the wages.
1.0 wages
0.79 fuel
0.04 galley food
0.04 travel (about half of our crews live out of state, and we pay travel expenses)
0.04 training and education
0.03 deck supplies
0.01 engine room supplies
0.01 injuries, medical etc.
It’s interesting to see that travel is only 4% of wages.
This points out how silly it is for some companies to limit their potential labor pool, and lose good hands, over not covering travel 100%.
Not covering travel is a relic of the past (when there were plenty of good local hands). Companies that are still trying to live in the past are shooting themselves in the foot.
1.0 wages
0.79 fuel
0.37 repair and shipyard (swings widely year-to-year)
0.17 P&I
0.04 galley food
0.04 travel (about half of our crews live out of state, and we pay travel expenses)
0.04 training and education
0.03 deck supplies
0.01 engine room supplies
0.01 injuries, medical etc.
Yup, and then you have the real scrooges that won’t even put you on payroll until you’re physically on the boat. Until a few years back, travel days used to be paid a full day which helped to make up the shortfall between the “travel pay” and what it actually cost to get to and from the boats.
I expect at the very least to be paid for a full day getting on and off the boat.
The better companies provide full pay door to door. And more companies are doing this, as they should.
When a company nickels and dimes you over travel, food, or health insurance, you know it’s a shit company and that they are going to nickel and dime you, and the boat over everything else. Also, when you actually need to use the health insurance you will be shocked at how much is not covered.
