great_escape

The Great Escape-Goat
by the editor of towboater.com

It has been a while since I devoted any time or energy to this website. Despite that, it seems people
have been visiting anyway. The site statistics are inspiring, averaging roughly 100 hits per day.
This for a site that has not been updated since September of last year! I am shocked. I guess I
should take a shot at explaining myself, of excusing why I have neglected to keep things updated. I
have been pretty busy with my paying job, a job many of you know, as a partner in a fledgling
towboat company. A now failed Towboat Company. So, now that I no longer have a proper paying
job, I have some time and energy to do something about towboater.com. I guess I said all that to
say this: I owe you an explanation. I owe the readers and visitors of towboater.com; I owe the
employees of our lost company; and I owe those out there who would attempt to do what we did,
the value of the lessons we learned and an explanation.

To those visiting the site regularly, hoping to find a fresh tow boat of the month or a snappy article
from a fellow pilot: We have been busy. Our company was started in February 2005 by a couple of
pilots with no money. Honestly, we did not even have much of a personal savings account
between us. We were in fact, living just like many of you, from check to check. We made the leap
anyway. We had the opportunity and we went for it, balls out. A larger company was having trouble
finding pilots so we worked out a deal with them to operate one of their boats. They helped us get
started, helped us survive that first bit which is the hardest, building payroll and waiting for money
to come in. At first it was terrific, they paid us on time and everything was shiny and happy. Then
they started to have trouble and they stopped paying us on time, stopped paying us the full
amount we were owed. Rather, they just eked out enough money to keep us surviving, barely.
Then they just stopped paying altogether. That was back in March or April of 2006. We went to a
large company, one of the largest red-flag companies out there, looking for jobs really. They
offered to help us out of the crunch if we would bring our boats and crews and play with them for
awhile. This was fantastic! These people paid, on time and in full! They let us charge the equipment
we needed to grow and the repairs necessary to function. We had the support and backing of Big
Customer! At this point it might be prudent to add that our Big Customer also employs BIG
LAWYERS so I will very carefully refer to them from here on out as Big Customer. They
encouraged us to grow, to add boats as quickly as possible. We peaked at four vessels all
operating within their charter department. They told us how great we were quite regularly, what a
great job we were doing. We owed them a pretty good chunk of money. Money for fuelling the
vessels on charter, money for supplies, money for AIS systems, money for groceries, money for
shipyards and dry-dock visits, money for radios and marine electronics, money for this and lots of
money for that. On top of this, in order to attract pilots to work for us (little guys with no benefits
really, not compared to the big companies out there), we had to pay a premium wage and
personally cater to these guys. We paid $500/day to trip pilots, we paid $450 to our Capt.’s and we
paid many of our deck crew up to $150/day. We paid well. We helped guys out. We paid their rent
while they were on the boat. We flew them out to the boat rather than use a bus. We bought them
groceries at home when they were in a bind. We loaned them money, cars, equipment. We custom
made everyone’s schedule. We gave advances and we paid contract labor even when the
accountants screamed uncle. We hand delivered paychecks to wives and girlfriends. We paid early
when we could. We deposited paychecks directly into bank accounts for guys on the boats. We
did everything we could to please everyone all the time. Of course we couldn’t but that did not
deter us from trying like hell. And we struggled. We struggled with $47,000 monthly insurance
premiums and big fat insurance down payments, we struggled with taxes, we struggled with
health insurance, we struggled with payroll and we struggled with trying to pay back our debt to
our one big customer. We struggled BIG. For a long while it just did not add up, just did not look
like it was going to work. We went through a period where we had to cut back, which hurt because
we had to let someone go that was our friend, a man who was sheer brilliance at keeping things
mechanically sound. A man we loved as a friend. He did not understand and still does not. We
were trying to survive.
In time, it actually began to start working out; it actually began to start flying financially. We were
beginning to make it from payroll to payroll without everything catching up. Oh sure the
bookkeeper and the accountant continued to scream the sky was falling but we managed to make
it from payroll to payroll with money still showing in the bank. Sure it was an illusion, a race for
checks to clear, but we were increasingly gaining on it. A few more months and we would have
possibly started winning that race, maybe started really making a few bucks. Alas, we never got
the chance. So, “why”, you may be asking, did we fail, if it was not that we went “broke”? Ah. Now
that is where the real story lies, where the true irony of it all comes blazing brilliantly forward like a
xenon spotlight.
From February 2005 to November 2006 we had no accidents, no insurance claims, or incidents.
Pretty good record in this business. On that day in November of ‘06, however, we started the
beginning of the end for our company. One of our boats had a head-on collision with one of the
boats owned and operated by our employer, Big Customer! To top it all off, a deckhand failed the
post-incident drug screen, the pilots drug screen came up questionable (as in tampered with), and
there is some suspicion that the pilot in question may have not been driving the vessel when the
incident happened. (Not good for us despite the fact that Big Customers crew also failed the very
same drug screens.) This brought our little company some unwanted attention from the BIG
Customers Suits. Our office is in Alabama and our vessels work from Corpus Christi, TX to Baton
Rouge, LA. We were on the road a lot. Things were happening 600 miles away that affected our
operation. Then, In January of this year, another biggee; one of our vessels nailed a lock gate in
Texas. Two days later that same vessel (with a different pilot) smacked a moored, unmanned
casino vessel after a face wire failed. Not only did he not report it, he attempted to deny it to the
USCG!
We were called into a meeting with our Big Customer Suits and they fired us. Everything was
structured through them. All the vessel leases were tied to them. One minute we were the heroes
and the next we were an embarrassment that had to be removed. We owed them just about as
much money as we had coming. We were left with no more income and no equipment with which
to recover. They took our boats and handed them over rather effortlessly to other companies,
crews and all. The very same crews that caused us to be fired! Did you get that part? Did that bit
there sink in? The exact same people who got us fired are still working on the same
vessels! In the name of “safety” we were dismissed, but the very same people, operating under
the very same guidelines (Big Customers very own policies and procedures), continued on. Our
company was erased. Someone had to hang from the courthouse lawn.
With no more money coming in, everything caught right up and our bank account is now several
thousand dollars over drawn. We owe our past employees thousands of dollars and two handfuls
of vendors many more thousands of dollars. Not to mention the IRS. So now, we are faced with
having to file bankruptcy to protect our selves personally as much as possible. We are at risk of
losing our homes and anything of value we may own to the IRS. Many of our employees are
screwed out of several weeks of hard work. Big Customer, however, never missed a beat. They did
not even lose an hour of operation. My partner and I are left holding the bag, slack-jawed and
staring ahead in disbelief.
Everything you did to help a guy out is quickly forgotten when you owe him a couple days pay and
have no means to make it good. There is a bunch of irony in the whole thing. We were essentially
working and maintaining this company to provide people with some jobs. It was an experiment on
our part of treating people with honesty and respect, and of sharing our resources with our
employees. We were not getting rich, our highest paid pilots made much more money than we did.
In fact, in the beginning, many of our deckhands made more money than we did. We made those
sacrifices for the future, for the development of a company that would be a great place to work. It
was an experiment of operating a company for the workers, for the guys doing the job. We had
some fantastic aspirations: to be the highest paying company; to providing the best benefit
package; to offering the most lucrative bonus program in the industry; and to cater to each
individual employee. Our goal was to create a work environment where the employees were
actually a part of the company. Instead of a company making a few guys in suits rich, we wanted to
bring wealth and involvement to our employees. That was our goal, our dream. It back fired in our
faces and that is a big irony. The people that cost us our job with Big Customer are the very ones
we were standing behind in a time of need. One: the target of a USCG witch-hunt and the other:
suffering a hard time in his life. We did not define people entirely by their mistakes as many people
do. Just because you screw up or go through a rough patch in life does not make you a bad
person. We believed in sticking with our people through the tough times, the difficult bits, the
divorce or the big crash. The personal bankruptcy. The failed drug test. The depression. The
medical problems. People bounce back and can come from a very hard chapter in life to do some
great things. We hoped, that if we just stick with people through these hard times, help them out
and stand behind them, then when the good times come they will be all the better. We felt it would
generate loyal employees and therefore build a strong company. We failed at that. We should have
been harder and less forgiving. We should have fired those guys at the first sign of trouble, much
like Big Customer fired us when we became too much of an embarrassment to their Bigger
Customers. The problem is, my partner and I, we just could not do it. We both have been through
rough patches in our lives and we know that the mistakes or the screw ups in our lives do not
define us or dictate our value as people, rather how we recover and respond to the challenges
defines our character.
So, now we are left with a great big mess that once was our company. There are a lot of guys out
there who are hurt and who we owe money to. There are a few guys out there who were going
through their rough patches and had no other option but us to help them out. There are people out
there who took a risk with us and gave us a bit of credit to dive on our vessel, drug test our crew,
or repair one of our radios and they will more than likely not get their money back. To them and to
the employees to whom we owe money or who needed us for a job because we were the only
ones left who would give them some kind of opportunity, I am deeply sorry. Truly, deeply sorry. We
did not see it coming like this. We had no way of knowing that Big Customer would drop us so
abruptly. It was a tenuous and sketchy balancing act of survival from day one for our little
experiment of a company. I know I, for one, am going to really miss it. It was a great place to work
and it was going to just get better in time. For now, we are stunned. We are trying to reclaim as
much money as possible to get the IRS and the employees paid back. After that, I do not know. We
have lost everything we have worked towards in the past four years. All the sacrifice and risk. All
the once in a lifetime opportunities. Gone. Past. I guess we had our shot and failed. If you lost a few
days pay by working for us during the moment we failed, we are sorry. Just remember you are not
the only one who has lost something here. Despite it all, I am glad to have been a part of it. Glad to
have stood shoulder to shoulder with my partner and with many of you and thumbed our noses in
the face of those who said we could not do it. We did do it. We failed at the hands of others not
because we went broke or did a poor job.
What would you do?
-editor, towboater.com