Now, this is
probably not a a general job that people would think of.
But this is a very important job.
It's you know, a lot of folks
think of truck driving and airplanes.
And without the waterways, without the people working on these boats.
You have a lot of that stuff that you're still not going to get it, period, ever,
because this is the only way to get it.
Anywhere from rock, scrap, corn, salt
caustic soda, wheat just anything.
Just anything they can think of to put it in a barge to take upriver
probably cost less than it does.
you know trucking all the diesel and the dump trucks and we hall more
in bulk.
You know from barge than you can a dump truck or
and you can hold more of it and a whole whole lot more barges.
So, you know, if you got six barges, you probably got
three or 400, 500 times more and you kind of dump truck
and keep traffic off interstate.
Just wake up you know, captian get’s up and
just when ever people sleep three o’clock in the morning be on watch by six.
You know, make sure that you instruct our guys, you know, what they're going
to do cleaning the boat, working the docks know where we're going,
how many barges we're picking up and you know, building tow.
So today we have two empty barges.
I mean, all our barges going to Charleston,
but there's two places there right next to each other.
One of them is a salt dock.
And so self-explanatory, we're bringing them a load of salt on unload.
And then another one is a chemical place.
So we're bringing them two empties to load, and then we're taking on one load
that they have to empty carry like, you know, scrap metal out of
Knoxville.
We got stuff that will eventually make its way plum to the Gulf,
you know, things like that. I don’t know.
I think it's crazy how where all that stuff gets made off to.
And I'm sure it ends up halfway across the world somewhere, you know.
Well, I just fell in love with towboating, and
you know I worked on the farm before it.
in Alabama a chicken farm.
I got tired of there so I figured you know
you make more money on towboat and so I started as cook
a cook an deckhand and a cook deckhand and the steers man.
And I figured out one for me.
I won't go to the pilot house.
To the pilot house.
You know, I went I set my mind to it.
I believe, you know,
the guys before me paved the way for me.
You know, old, old towboat captains Trevor is coming up, mate.
Just like me. I'm a I'm a new pilot.
I'm still learning.
He's a new mate. He's still learning.
And even though we have so many years here,
the industry, you're always learning something, you know what I mean?
The weather changes.
The just the timing is not right.
And you got to redo your knowledge of the the way things go.
So, you know, but the crew I think we got a good crew, you know,
all of them are newbies, but as long as they got a strong back
and a good will to work, I think we can manage.
You know, I feel like I am a hard worker and it's not so much as being a teachers.
It is listening and learning for yourself, you know what I mean?
Like I feel like
because I'm a good learner, maybe that's what makes me a good teacher.
We've got Big Dave.
He's worked for other tugboat companies.
He's got ten years experience. And then we got Jason.
He's a good dude.
He's coming along, you know,
this is he's not been here long, but he's picking it up.
It's hard. Work.
It takes time to learn the stuff.
Some people are fast learners.
I've been blessed to be a fast learner.
Some people take some more time, have my sratched the surface on the stuff
I need to know, not even close.
My two boys were on this boat before I got on it.
They spent a couple of years on this boat out there on tow.
Doing what Trevor and the other guys do
and I was ready to get on the water and
came to be with them.
The first time she's ever cooked on the boat either
you know, I mean, the first time she's doing
it ain’t nothing like cooking at home, you know, three, two or three kids.
You got, you know,
four deckhands, a captain, a call,
relief captain, a pilot, you know, and then the cook.
You got to learn to cook more.
You know, for the whole crew, instead of just two or three she’s
she’s getting the hang of it.
I’ll tell you what, I’m bigger than you are. I can grab the whole of them.
If uh, you can get that old L barge out of there.
Some days are easy
But there is a lot of long days too like.
There's a lot of long days because we have our single barge locks,
you know, we get 12, 15, now that's every bit of 12, 15 hours
locking barges through having to you know, we have to break every individual
barge hard to get it through the lock.
So, I mean, as those make very incredibly long days.
Essentially when you lock, you know, a you know, an actual lock, what it's called.
So there's different water levels at the dam.
Uh, essentially what the lock does allow us to come in and get today,
you know, raises into that different water pool
so we can get up or down the river as needed.
I mean, you know, if it rains, you know, it's
10, 12, 15 foot high, you know, we'll shut down
if it gets so high here they won't let you lock so
it's hard to navigate through all you know all the strong current
you know the dams keep the the current down
you know that way you can navigate it good.
Some times you can sometimes you can’t depending on know
how hard it rains.
Yeah I feel like I help you know, the economy out in the country out
just delivering product to many, many people.
You know, wheat, corn, scrap.
You got to have it if not you know all these other
big business like Olin they can't work without salt
you know all these farmers can't do without fertilizer.
You know, the cattle can't go without corn.
The bread companies can't do without the wheat
you know, it's pretty, pretty important I guess.
I got to get heavy on the sails.
one wide.
It’s cool just to see
how many other jobs there are that my job affects you know
because you got to have crane operators off load material
you've got people that have to build the barges you got to build the boats.
I mean now we have jobs and we have to have mechanics come repair,
things like that.
Yeah, I've realized a lot bigger than what people think it is, you know.
You know, the price of the fuel went up,
you know, you had to order like a week ahead of time
to when now, you know, you order one day, you get it the next.
But I mean, we hold 22,000 gallons.
If you make two runs Knoxville and back and, you know,
we put 8000 gallons, we use 8000 gallons in two weeks
versus
hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dump trucks.
You know, you save a whole bunch of money.
It's a revolving door in that sad, um,
but it's actually like such a great community.
Um, my kids are grown, almost all of them.
I have a daughter who's almost grown.
I have two boys who are grown.
They left home and you know,
You know.
I'm alone.
So being on a boat keeps you from being alone all the time.
Every one of them.
You live on a boat for 14 days in a month.
You just at home 7 days a month.
So, I mean, you got to adapt, you know, you coming from home, moving on.
You spend more time on the on the on the boat, you know,
where you boat family than you do at home with your real family.
There's a whole lot of phone calls to the boat.
You know, it's like you
this is like your first home and your real home, but your second home.
That's the toughest challenge.
Just taking that step to be gone for.
You know, so long. We all have kids on here.
We have families.
I’ve got two seven year old twins and
and a wife that I've been married to for 20 years, so.
Oh, yeah, it's definitely hard.
I, I could go home today and not bat an eye
I think people misunderstand the boat life.
It's not so much
that they might not understand the industry part of it.
It's the lifestyle of it because it is a lifestyle.
This this is not for the faint of heart,
but it also can give you
a really good sense of peace, of mind being out here.
You have to be built for this this lifestyle.
But I think if you are built for it, you can have a really bright future here.
Towboat with a good future.
You know, if you stay in it and you know, there's always job openings for deckhand
towboating, you know,
being on the river, being gone it pays good
but how often can you wake up a morning and tell people that you drive a towboat
for a living, that you drive a tow you know, that's longer than
5 football fields long Well, you know, from Chattanooga to Knoxville,
it's pretty, pretty impressive
I think.