Pushing smaller tugs

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Frank Bentayou

Plain Dealer Reporter

Ron Rasmus is in the midst of something people in Cleveland, or even the entire Great Lakes region, seldom see.

After getting financial help from the economic development departments of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County, the 68-year-old Bronx, N.Y., native and Pepper Pike resident built a $4 million headquarters for Great Lakes Towing Co., of which he's president.

The new facility opens the door to a type of manufacturing that left the area, most thought permanently, more than 25 years ago: Great Lakes Towing will build marine vessels there.

Not since the late 1970s, before George Steinbrenner closed American Ship Building in Lorain, has anyone attempted such an enterprise in Northeast Ohio.

But the stars aligned for Great Lakes Towing, which has been in Cleveland since 1899. It's an affiliate of Great Lakes Group, which also includes Puerto Rico Towing & Barge Co., Admiral Towing and Barge Co. and Tugz International LLC.

For decades it has operated tugboats (38 now) within the 8,300-mile shoreline of North America's inland sea, the Great Lakes. It runs another dozen in other locations.

Now, with low-interest loans from local governments, the time is right, Rasmus figured, to launch new vessels - in this case, tugs and barges - from these shores.

The company is in the early stages of building its first two mid-size tugboats at the company's Division Avenue headquarters along the Cuyahoga River. They will be 74 feet long with a beam, or maximum width, of 30 feet.

Great Lakes Towing pushing smaller tugs

Rasmus envisions a market for these craft and hundreds more in the future as old tugs wear out and the towing industry latches on to the advantages of the powerful, modern, cleaner-running and more economical vessels he intends to produce.

Gazing at plans for the robustlooking tug, Rasmus, a burly, energetic man in an office filled with nautical fixtures, pictures and memorabilia, thumps the page with his forefinger. “This fits a need,” he said.

The need, according to tug operators who ply this trade, is for a slightly smaller, more modestly powered tug than the more-than-96-foot vessels now commonly used to move oceangoing ships around busy ports.

The bigger tugs, more than 34 feet wide with a draft, or depth, of almost 13 feet, have 4,000-to-6,000-horsepower diesel engines that burn expensive fuel at a staggering rate. Moreover, they require a crew of at least three to navigate ports as well as open water, instead of the two-person crews the new smaller tugs use.

The lower fuel consumption of Great Lakes' planned 2,800-horsepower tugs, along with smaller crews, can mean big savings in operating, to say nothing of capital, costs. Big tugs cost more than $5 million. The smaller vessels Rasmus planshe said, will sell for $3.2 million to $4 million, “depending on how they’re equipped.”

Tugs serve a variety or roles, from pushing or pulling ore boats through twisting rivers like the Cuyahoga and other confined spaces to motoring lines of loaded barges across the Gulf of Mexico, up or down the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, and from the mineral fields in the Upper Midwest to the St. Lawrence Seaway and beyond. They also make good port fireboats.

Each assignment requires different propulsion systems, steering mechanisms, gearboxes and outriggers. “They’re basically custom-outfitted,” Rasmus said, showing pictures of variously finished tugs in Great Lakes Towing’s fleet.

Why does the world need more tugboats? The towing industry, like other parts of the shipping business, operates on a 25-to 30-year cycle of products. “That’s about the useful life of a boat,” Rasmus said.

Manufacturing records show that a huge quantity of the nation’s tugboats first hit the water during the nation’s shift from its World War II economy, when shipyards made mostly war vessels, to a burgeoning post-war business boom.

Count back. World War II ended almost 62 years ago. The next big push to replace the postwar vessels was in the 1960s and early ’70s. Now, those craft are getting a bit long in the tooth.

“It’s time for more shipbuilding,” said Joe Starck, Great Lakes vice president for engineering. He stood in the north portion of the company’s headquarters, a low, stone-sided building with tinted windows nestled among simple and neat landscaping.

Starck walked through a corridor to a towering, windowless room enclosing the first stop in the process of building a big, bulky workhorse of a vessel. In fact, right on the concrete floor, in shiny black tape, was the outline of hull No. 101, the first tug from the company since the early 20th century. The outline faced east in the huge room, under the tracks of a 10-ton crane that, in time, will move this hull — as well as hull No. 102, already under construction — westerly toward the company’s dry dock.

The shipyard has been serving as a repair facility for the towing company’s tug fleet as well as for other Great Lakes vessels, including university and government research craft, Coast Guard vessels and a variety of commercial boats.

Starck said the company’s future looks bright. In addition to Great Lakes’ expansion into tug building, it also has its growing barge-making enterprise.

“Our truckable, interlocking barges are catching on,” Rasmus said of the products marketed as Dockmaster and Bargemaster units. At 13 feet wide, from 30 to 50 feet long, the floating platforms can lock together to form 26-foot-wide coastal barges for goods. Then, taken apart, they can fit on a flatbed trailer and roll overland to the next port.

“We just finished an order of 12-by-70-foot units that we trucked to Annapolis, Md.,” Starck said. “This is a very competitive product for us.”

The company also will explore private recreational boat and yacht repair. “We haven’t considered that business in the past, but we’re thinking about a boat works” that will respond to the needs of yacht owners.

The next phase of the company’s expansion could be upgrading its dry dock facilities with a 600-ton travel lift to enable repairs of larger craft and a new structure for barge building From the city and the county’s standpoint, said Kevin Schmotzer, who works with small businesses through Cleveland’s economic development department, “the company’s success means more jobs.”

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: fbentayou@plaind.com, 216-999-4116

216-621-4854

800-321-3663