Roger Blough future

Discussion board focusing on Great Lakes Shipping Question & Answer. From beginner to expert all posts are welcome.
CSLFAN

Re: Roger Blough future

Unread post by CSLFAN »

Thanks for your response guys...I wanted to generate some discussion on the future of great lakes shipping and you are providing it....I'm working on some other numbers and will post soon....In the mean time, what is your estimate of the cost of the new Barker which in terms of size and tonnage is like a Great Republic with the boom on the other end.
guest

Re: Roger Blough future

Unread post by guest »

the blough can not fit in the welland canal or seaway locks so the wind mill blade idea is out the window. im sure when the st clair is finished being scrapped she wont be far behind
Guest

Re: Roger Blough future

Unread post by Guest »

hausen wrote:
As for the Blough it's tough to forecast. It doesn't seem likely that she'll ever be deployed in the iron ore pellet / limestone trades ever again, barring a serious change in bulk cargo volume and routing trends on the Lakes.
In your opinion, what leads to this conclusion? Prior to the series of GLF layups (Blough, Clarke, Speer) in summer 2020 due to COVID-19 economic conditions, all the fleet's vessels were sailing. Is the steel trade not expected to rebound to these levels? Several blast furnaces have shuttered since then, but I'm not certain just how much tonnage was lost as a result.
hausen wrote:
There has been indication that she hasn't really been fully "right" since that major grounding she suffered 5+ years ago.
Are these handling problems, structural concerns, etc.?
hausen
Posts: 803
Joined: July 2, 2010, 1:36 pm

Re: Roger Blough future

Unread post by hausen »

Guest wrote:Hausen - well thought out post. I agree that there will always be commercial shipping on the Lakes. It's just going to be different than today.

Do you agree that the Blough is heading to scrap?

And with scrap steel prices at really high levels, will we see more Lakers being scrapped instead of going through the next 5 year?

Thank you!

As for the Blough it's tough to forecast. It doesn't seem likely that she'll ever be deployed in the iron ore pellet / limestone trades ever again, barring a serious change in bulk cargo volume and routing trends on the Lakes.

There has been indication that she hasn't really been fully "right" since that major grounding she suffered 5+ years ago. If that's the case and there's still parts of her hull that could use further repair/replacement, then that would be a scenario that leaned strongly toward her ending up going to scrap sooner rather than later.

Then again, it's expensive to build a Jones-Act compliant ship. It's often stated that the most expensive parts of vessel construction involves the curved steel plating around a ship's bow and stern. If the Blough's bow and stern hull/structure are in relatively good shape, then it's not inconceivable that those portions of the ship could be saved and affixed to a completely new or heavily rebuilt cargo-carrying mid-body.

Such a scenario is not very likely; it would involve a degree of innovative thinking and dedication to running ships that seems to be on the decline in the Great Lakes industry, especially on the U.S. side. Such a scenario would only come about if there were a novel cargo niche that made saving and/or repurposing some or all of the Blough worth the cost of such a project.

One possible thing that comes to mind is that the Blough's combination of a forward pilothouse arrangement with its relatively long and wide mid-body could make for a ship that is well-suited for transporting wind turbine blades, which are becoming increasingly large and more difficult for smaller ships to carry vs. the blades that were being moved around the Lakes in the 2005 - 2015 period. The 'offshore' wind turbine industry on the Great Lakes is poised for significant growth in the coming decades, and if wind turbines are indeed installed in large numbers on the Lakes, they're likely to be turbines with very tall towers and very long blades. If the Blough were deemed to be a suitable candidate for conversion/rebuilding to carry such cargo, the resulting ship would still not likely be able to fit through the Welland Canal or Seaway. That means that a hypothetical wind turbine blade/tower-carrying Blough would only make sense if a future demand emerges for carrying wind turbine blades between manufacturers, transshipment ports, staging areas, and/or installation sites on the 'upper' four Great Lakes.
Andrew

Re: Roger Blough future

Unread post by Andrew »

I doubt US fleets will send many boats to the scrapyard while the Jones Act is in place.

That said, within the next 10 years or so, the three AAAs, Alpena, Wilfred Sykes, and some of the LLT ships will reach a point where they will need to decide whether to repower or not. I've always been under the assumption that if the hull is in good enough shape, you're going to save a lot of money by putting a new engine under the hood. But, at a certain point, that's going to be a real question- how much longer is the hull really going to last? Interlake has seemed to indicate by their recent repowerings that they expect their 1950s ships to cross the 100 year threshold, something that would not surprise me at all because of the care they have for their vessels.

There will always be shipping on the lakes, and much of the reason for the decline over the years has been an increase in cargo capacity. The Edgar B. Speer can carry the amount that 7 1920s-era ships could carry. Granted, I see that coal will disappear within the next decade or so, but I never rule something out until it's gone. I think many of the casualties within the last decade have been ships which either spent most of their life under an American flag and have spent some time under the Canadian flag, a flag which can replace a ship for the quarter of the cost an American fleet can. Other reasons for casualties have been poorly run companies; I'll still maintain to this day that if Oglebay Norton hadn't picked the wrong CEO, that fleet would still be alive and well.

The greatest concern to me has been the CN fleet, which I think has really beaten those ships up pretty bad. I doubt any of the AAAs last much into the 2030s thanks to that, although Clarke and Anderson did get some work done within the last few years. Whoever picks up that fleet, be it a Canadian company (who I heard did make a bid) or GLF itself, is probably not going to want the 767s.
Guest

Re: Roger Blough future

Unread post by Guest »

Hausen - well thought out post. I agree that there will always be commercial shipping on the Lakes. It's just going to be different than today.

Do you agree that the Blough is heading to scrap?

And with scrap steel prices at really high levels, will we see more Lakers being scrapped instead of going through the next 5 year?
hausen
Posts: 803
Joined: July 2, 2010, 1:36 pm

Re: Roger Blough future

Unread post by hausen »

All of that may be true. It also might be useful to examine some potential bright sides for the future of shipping activity on the Lakes:

The grain trade may very well have its place in the prospective future of Lakes shipping. In recent years annual grain tonnage through Thunder Bay has arguably bottomed out and has begun to reverse the decline seen throughout the 1990s. Thunder Bay has plenty of storage and terminal loading capacity, and looking into the coming decades moving grain by rail from the Canadian prairies to Thunder Bay does not seem to be as susceptible to the multiple varieties of increasingly frequent severe weather disruptions that hampered traffic on the rail lines leading west to Vancouver over the past year or two. Grain loading out of Hamilton has grown robustly over the past decade, and other Lake Ontario ports have added terminal capacity recently as well.

It may only be a matter of time before a similar rebound is seen at ports like Duluth-Superior or the terminals on southern Lake Michigan. There has been an arguably single-minded / "group think" mentality in the U.S. grain transportation industry over the past two decades or so, which has led to a growing majority of U.S. exports being funneled through a dwindling number of outlet routes. The major outlet, the Mississippi River / ports of Louisiana barge-to-export-terminal route, has seen significant disruption by drought, flooding, and major hurricanes multiple times during the past two decades. Long overland rail routes leading from U.S. midwest growing regions to west coast ports have begun to prove vulnerable to similar weather disruptions as the ones that wrought havoc in British Columbia recently, although to a less severe degree. That's not to say that the Pacific Northwest and the Gulf of Mexico won't continue to be the leading export outlets for U.S. grain in coming years, but it would only take a slight diversion of certain cargo flows away from those routes to make for a major rebound in grain tonnage moving through Lakes ports like Duluth-Superior. The transportation industry is experiencing a significant wake-up call when it comes to the pitfalls of putting all of the eggs in one basket, so to speak, when it comes to transportation routes, and the Great Lakes have significant potential as a valuable relief valve and freight rate-controlling competitive alternative. New players like Ceres Global Ag and new-ish players like Viterra seem to be seeking out and investing in grain terminal assets on the U.S. side of the Lakes.

Another advantage that puts Lakes shipping on solid footing for the future is the fact that waterborne transportation is more fuel-efficient and CO2 emissions-efficient than land-based modes. As fuel costs increase that advantage only grows. The effect promises to be even further amplified in the near future as more attention is paid to pound-for-pound energy efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions footprints with regards to transportation; the more those factors govern freight movement decision-making, the more moving cargo by water wherever possible gains significant appeal.

A large amount of freight (and even passenger!) transport currently flows through the Great Lakes region via relatively inefficient overland (or airborne) modes of transportation. The major factor keeping this status quo in place is a habit of deplyoing large direct government subsidies aimed at keeping fuel prices artificially below what the market would otherwise dictate, and at doling out indirect government subsidies in the form of huge amounts of taxpayer money habitually earmarked for road construction budgets, regardless of the bad return on investment road construction represents, and at the expense of wiser uses of funds such as road maintenance and support for growth in more efficient means of freight (and passenger!) transport (i.e. trains and ships vs. planes and cars/freight semi-trucks).

If those arguably out-of-balance (from an energy efficiency and economic cost standpoint) practices were re-examined, and the priorities which govern policy making and budget making better aligned with what's most efficient (not to mention what's less disruptive to our safety and health) we would very likely see a significant rebirth of the kinds of trades on the Great Lakes which are currently artificially suppressed by subsidies to less efficient modes of transportation. It's quite possible that such changes are coming, akin to the surprisingly rapid paradigm shift that the energy industry is currently experiencing. Such changes would happen more swiftly and more effectively if we're all more aware of the situation outlined above, and the community of people interested in Great Lakes/Seaway shipping is well-positioned to understand whats at stake and to enjoy the side-effects of a modal shift toward waterborne transport!

Any boatnerd might consider enthusiastic support for a trend toward more energy-smart, climate-smart, public safety-smart transportation policies and practices in our society, because such changes would likely lead to a number of cargo flows that currently bypass the Great Lakes overland switching to waterborne means of transport. It is interesting to imagine the declines we're currently seeing in the Lakes shipping industry offset by a renaissance in the flows of agricultural products, semi-finished raw materials, finished goods, specialty bulk products, and even passenger traffic which all currently move through the region by land.

Such musings may seem pie-in-the-sky; that's understandable. There are plenty of small precedents, however. Hurricane Katrina's disruption of Gulf Coast grain exports led to a slight but notable increase in grain moving through Duluth Superior in the autumn of 2005. Weather disruption to rail lines in western Canada last autumn/early winter led to an increase in potash exports through Thunder Bay. The last time fuel prices were elevated for an extended period of time (c. 2006 - 2008), new flows of general cargo started switching from overland transport to/from east coast ports, instead moving through the Seaway/Lakes as far inland as possible before switching to land transport at Duluth-Superior.

In the short term, disasters such as major droughts and Russia's invasion of Ukraine are rearranging global agricultural trade flows, which may prove to mean increased movement of grain through the Lakes/Seaway, yet again proving the system's usefulness. In the medium term, increasingly frequent extreme weather events in coastal regions and in the continental west both might tip the scales further in favor of the Lakes/Seaway as a more steadily reliable and less disruptable trade route. In the long term, sea-level rise is likely to outpace global average increase along the eastern seaboard of the U.S., where several major ports compete somewhat directly with Great Lakes ports for import and export cargo movements. Certain terminals and ports may see the cost of abatement necessary to outpace rising water levels become too great to bear, which could mean more cargo bypassing the ocean coasts and heading directly to the Lakes region. Increasing numbers of people may also be inclined to migrate to the Great Lakes region from points south and west, in search of abundant clean fresh water and relief from extreme heat, drought, water shortage, and storm events likely to become more common in coastal / southern / southwestern regions. The larger the population of people in cities around the Lakes, the more demand for freight and passenger traffic; if at the same time people are moving to the region, modal shifts are also underway to favor more efficient means of transport, that could add to the demand for ships moving goods and even people on the Great Lakes as well.
Jared
Posts: 798
Joined: December 6, 2014, 4:51 pm

Re: Roger Blough future

Unread post by Jared »

The shipping industry has been in decline for over 120 years on the lakes. In 1890 there were 3000+ ships on the lakes, then by 1900 there were 2200 vessels. By 1910 it was 1600. Now one will argue that the big steel freighters and their larger consorts put the smaller vessels out of business by out hauling them and out competing them, but that is precisely why our fleet it getting smaller. The 600s out competed the smaller 300-500ft ships and then they themselves were out competed by the 730s and the few 800s. Then by the 70s the footers came along and was eating up the market. Fast forward 5 decades and the footers and the larger boats incapable of making it into Lake Ontario and St. Lawrence are being out competed by the smaller, efficient, and the diverse boats that have either managed to hang on for the better part of 6 decades or by newbuilds that can carry an array of cargoes not yet imagined or more diverse than the iron ore/ coal routes. The situation has changed so much in the last 5 years that the boats on the wall had a hopeful future to one that is bleak and they will be cut up.

How many other boat watchers of the previous era mourned the demise of the palace steamers followed by the schooners, followed by the lumber hookers, followed by the demise of wood altogether. The same that we are mourning the end of the for-ended pilothouses and steamers.

Change is always afoot in the world. In the grand view of things we will one day be the watchers who reveled in obsolete technology.
CSLFAN

Roger Blough future

Unread post by CSLFAN »

I started boat watching in 1975 and recently I was reading Greenwood's Lake Boats 1978. The fleets for that year listed 20 plus companies and a total of 271 boats. The US had 55 SU and 90 bulkers totaling 145. Canada had 33 SU and 93 bulkers totaling 126...Total boats 271. Fast forward to 2021....Canada: CSL and Algoma had 34 boats, all running. The US had 46 and 9 of them on the wall: McKee Sons, CTC # 1, Ryerson, Tecumseh,Sherwin, Valo, Callaway, Clarke and Blough. Total running was 71 boats, 200 less than 1978 and only 2 Canadian fleets and 6 US fleets...ILM with only the Alpena and Cliffs with 2 boats running are not really fleets - so in reality only 4 US fleets. Interlake announced the Cort on the wall thru May and no fit out date for the LAT.
So , Blough, Callaway and Clarke----they did not run in 2021 and GLF got along without them. Now CN wants to sell the 9 boat fleet. The 3 are in need of major repairs, all out of pocket expense. Only 1, Great Republic can go out the seaway and if the Canadians had wanted / needed a 1,000 footer in the last 40 years they would have built one. And remember that CSL and Algoma have ocean and other shipping interests and they build new off shore. So they buyer is ???? Even if ore stages a comeback it will be offset by the decline in coal---and grain ??? Watch U Tube and see all the CN and CP unit grain trains going west....All of the Canadian grain fleets, Paterson, P&H, Soo River, Misener etc. are all gone. I don't see any of the 9 boats I listed as ever sailing again and I am willing to bet the first footer will be gone within the next 2 years
probably 1 of the 6 in the ASC group. I didn't list the 8 ATB's as they are a different thing by themselves. The Roger Blough.....follow St, Clair to the scrap pile. Next time....Great timing on building the new lock and the need for a new US icebreaker for those 3 Canadian salt boats.
Post Reply