PL 480 cargos were cut during the second Obama Administration resulting in a loss of tonnage for a few carriers. I’m sure that’s part of the dip.
Choice of Y-axis range on the original graph is a bit misleading, too. Makes 169 to 184 look like way more than the 8.9% increase that it is.
Yup, I know of Liberty and the old TECO fleet, off the top of my head.
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Teco took it on the chin.
TECO was a good company for awhile. Fuel transport made sense for them because they were supplying their own power plants. Government contracts for grain etc., was just a means to survive and possibly expand. When they sold out to the investment bankers who promised to upgrade the vessels and make a viable shipping company we all knew the end was near. They borrowed like hell using the assets as collateral, lined their pockets and then said, oops… we are bankrupt. The investors walked away richer and the company along with the jobs went bye bye. Whenever “investment bankers” get involved break out the lubricant.
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They were also good to their people. I hardly heard any of their former officers or crew complain about how they were treated working there.
Had quite a few friends/acquaintances that worked there.I was already retired when heard all the top heavies shenanigans Power plants reduced use of coal didn’t help… Another decent employer gone.
I think it was Milner and the guy with the accent who showed up in Egypt when we were heading to the ship when all that went down. I remember the meeting being fairly pointless because we had all basically just gotten off the plane and were exhausted. I remember them talking up how the tugs were the only ones that were really profitable. I remember not long after that they were selling the tug division. I bailed not long after that.
Do you know if any of the crew stayed with the ships after they were sold? I think some of them are MEBA now.
Except for crew changes. Some of those really sucked. Spend a full day flying to Egypt, get right into a shuttle for the 3+ hour drive to Said or Suez, then an hour or so on a launch only to find a stack of turnover notes because the offsigners left on the same launch that brought you in.