Source: Forbes
NEW ORLEANS -- A federal program to recruit more tugboat pilots may have backfired by allowing thousands of novice captains to take the helm and contributing to a 25 percent increase in the number of accidents on the nation's rivers.
An Associated Press review of Coast Guard records indicates that the U.S. tugboat fleet is increasingly piloted by captains who have spent as little as one year in the wheelhouse.
"The system has failed," said David Whitehurst, a tug captain and member of the board of directors for the National Mariners Association, a national tug workers' group based in Houma, La.
"We have the highest horsepower in history, pushing more tonnage than ever in history, with the least knowledgeable personnel in history. It is a disaster. Look at the accidents we've had in the past few years."
Said Richard Block, secretary of the mariners' group: "You can't learn to run a towing vessel overnight, and some of these companies are simply rushing it too much."
Pushing or pulling barges piled high with freight, today's river tugboats are the 18-wheelers of the waterways, transporting all manner of goods such as oil, grain and chemicals.
NEW ORLEANS -- A federal program to recruit more tugboat pilots may have backfired by allowing thousands of novice captains to take the helm and contributing to a 25 percent increase in the number of accidents on the nation's rivers.
An Associated Press review of Coast Guard records indicates that the U.S. tugboat fleet is increasingly piloted by captains who have spent as little as one year in the wheelhouse.
"The system has failed," said David Whitehurst, a tug captain and member of the board of directors for the National Mariners Association, a national tug workers' group based in Houma, La.
"We have the highest horsepower in history, pushing more tonnage than ever in history, with the least knowledgeable personnel in history. It is a disaster. Look at the accidents we've had in the past few years."
Said Richard Block, secretary of the mariners' group: "You can't learn to run a towing vessel overnight, and some of these companies are simply rushing it too much."
Pushing or pulling barges piled high with freight, today's river tugboats are the 18-wheelers of the waterways, transporting all manner of goods such as oil, grain and chemicals.
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