American Victory and Fortitude

[Boat Driver]

May I make one point. Oglebay Norton was not done in by fleet mis-mangement. We always carried our weight. It was bad decisions by the so called upper level managers and board of directors that caused the demise of O.N.

[Guest]

ASC (Boland and Cornelius) has been around for over 100 years. They have outlasted numerous companies including mighty Oglebay Norton. They are very capable of running steamers profitably and competently. It is more efficient to run a diesel vessel during this economic downturn. When business returns, the steamers will as well.

[sgrima]

You have a master and 3 mates on each vessel, of the 4 bridge officers 3 including the captain have to have Great Lakes Pilotage before they can operate a ship.

[Richard]

Could ASC repower the steamers from steam to diesels like what
Interlake has done and then operate them as diesels someday?

[serving 2 masters]

An additional strike against either ship sailing for ASC stems from the inconvienience of dispatching steamers profitably. "Keep 'em Full & Moving" otherwise they are losing money. ASC has not had to deal with that sort of dynamic dispatching in many years. There are companies that could make money operating these vessels, but ASC is not one of them.

Tragedy really, they are good hulls yet, but steam requires special people in the front office, as well as aboard the boat.

[Chad]

The SIU is made up of over 10,000 members and the AMO is made up of around 5,000 members. ASC would not have any problems crewing additional vessels if the opportunity presented itself

Thats not really accurate, because te SIU has nothing to do with the American Victory or American Fortitude.

And although AMO does have 5,000 members, very few of them have the Steam Engineer or Great Lakes Pilotage licenses required for the American Victory and American Fortitude.

ASC has already been forced to bring people out of retirement this year, even with 5 boats laid up.

[Guest]

The SIU is made up of over 10,000 members and the AMO is made up of around 5,000 members. ASC would not have any problems crewing additional vessels if the opportunity presented itself

SIU, at present, has nothing to do with these vessels or any of the other boats they bought from Oglebay Norton. Regardless, i agree they would not have a problem finding crew.

[Guest]

The SIU is made up of over 10,000 members and the AMO is made up of around 5,000 members. ASC would not have any problems crewing additional vessels if the opportunity presented itself

[Guest]

Only ASC can answer that and they haven't made any announcements.

Earlier this year, the company was looking for possible salt contracts for 1 or 2 of the steamers. Haven't heard anything further since. Due to a large number of retirements last year, there has been a shortage of mates and engineers on the ASC fleet ever since they brought out the last boat (Buffalo). Right now, I don't think they could dig up a crew to sail another boat. The situation with the Steelworkers doesn't make it any easier either to bring out one of the steamers.

[Guest]

Only ASC can answer that and they haven't made any announcements.

[Guest]

Another post kind of made it sound like both the American Victory and American Fortitude have sailed their last. Does anyone have firm information on this? Are they done or will an improved economy bring them back out?