Relative Costs of Running a Shipping Line

Professional Mariner Forum
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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.

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Will they allow you to analyze revenue??

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how about H&M insurance + P&I or similar/equivalent?

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That’s someone else’s department .:slightly_smiling_face:

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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.

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