May 1, 2006
Amphibious assault | Dave Barrett discusses using massive seagoing Army surplus trucks to supply the island construction market
By Taylor Smith
Dave Barrett says he grew up with salt water in his veins. He spent his childhood sailing and surfing on the Jersey shore, and by age 17 Barrett landed on a lobster boat out of Newport, R.I.. He spent years working offshore, more than a hundred miles out at sea, hauling and baiting traps for three- or four-day stretches. And when the thrill of lobstering wore off, Barrett and his wife, Mary Ann, jumped to a new set of ships. The pair spent more than eight years running private yachts for well-heeled owners in sunny locales from the West Indies to South America.
But during his stint as a yacht captain, Barrett, 47, also spent plenty of time sailing the waters of New England. And during his travels, he noticed the vast number of inhabited islands dotting Casco and Penobscot bays. Among those rocky island outposts sprouted with tall pines, Barrett saw a business opportunity. The inhabited islands, he figured, needed good, reliable transportation for more than just the island's people. They also needed a way to bring out loads of lumber to build a home, or tons of crushed gravel to build and repair roads. For generations, says Barrett, those materials were brought over load by load in lobster boats ˆ a stack of two-by-fours here, a load of sand and stone there. Barrett thought there had to be an easier way.
So in early 2000, Barrett began scouring government auction listings for giant U.S. Army amphibious vehicles, the kind of vessels that could navigate choppy waters and still drive up the beach to unload a fleet of assault tanks. Barrett eventually found two such vessels ˆ dubbed LARCs, for lighter, amphibious resupply cargo ˆ and he and his wife plowed their savings into picking them up from auction and transporting them to Maine. Barrett wouldn't say exactly how much he paid for the vessels, but a quick scan of yacht brokers shows LARCs currently being sold for a few hundred thousand dollars to more than a half a million. Barrett, however, says he got a good deal. "In comparison to what the government spent to maintain them, I paid pennies on the dollar," he laughs.
The pair in 2001 launched Sea Truk LLC in Islesboro, and since then the company has worked from downeast points like Machiasport to Bustin's Island in Casco Bay. Mainebiz recently caught Barrett on a rare slow day in April ˆ the start of Sea Truk's busy season ˆ to discuss how his amphibious vehicles serve the island construction business. The following is an edited transcript.
Mainebiz: What kinds of work does Sea Truk typically get calls for?
Dave Barrett: Primarily, what we do is involved with private development, mostly home development on the smaller islands. We've ranged pretty much the entire coast ˆ anywhere you can find islands. I could list the harbors and the islands, but the list is getting pretty long by now.
We get calls not only from people who have existing homes, but people who are interested in developing a new piece of property. Needless to say, when you're doing a new piece, you're starting from the ground up, and we end up contracting and subcontracting in a manner that gets the clients the equipment they need, the building materials they need and the workers they need.
So you're not just ferrying the equipment back and forth from the mainland?
It's more of a contracting position. If the phone rings first for me on a project, then more the better, because I'm able to coordinate the marine part and I also get a piece of the project in terms of contracting it out and subcontracting it out. I have the key to the lock in that we're able to access the islands.
Before Sea Truk, how was this work done?
Traditionally, it had been done largely by lobster boat. There were smaller operations going back through the years that guys had up and down the coast where they would utilize small barges or floats, but it was rudimentary and arduous and expensive. Because if you're just loading up a regular lobster boat full of lumber, you're bringing it over, you're dropping it off at the shoreline and you're carting this stuff all the way up to the building site. We're able to put a tremendous load on the vessel and, in many cases, climb right up to the island surface.
Looking at the trucks, it kind of seems like you're mounting an invasion of construction equipment.
It kind of feels like that sometimes. It doesn't fail to still provide the thrill that it did right from the start. The [LARCs] are really massive machines, and they really defy the norm in their size and their ability to move all that equipment.
Because they're so massive they also seem pretty expensive. How did you fund the start of the business?
I funded the company on my own, and I didn't have an unlimited amount of funding. I was able to purchase the boats and fund them to the point where I was able to get the boats in Maine and ready to work.
It wasn't a cheap endeavor, not when you're talking about money that you've accrued over your work lifespan. But I was lucky enough to find a silent partner that carried me the last mile and really put us into business. That was all a revelation: You get an idea, you execute on it and physically make things happen, but the reality of advertising and the cost of being in business really kicks in. If you can't advertise, the phone won't ring and then you can't even pay your phone bills. So there were a lot of startup costs and that's where I brought in a partner, and that's the way Sea Truk LLC is organized.
Has business been as strong as you expected?
In the five years that I've been in business, it's caused me to stop and think, "Wow, would I stop and do this all over again?" But you don't know where the journey's going to take you. And I feel better now than I did two years ago about our possibilities for growth. I'm excited about it. We're looking at quite a bit of work coming up this year, and that's based on phone calls that date back a year. That's because it takes people quite a bit of time to get projects organized on an island.
What were some of your first jobs when you launched Sea Truk?
The supply of aggregates was one of the things that I focused on right from the start. We have a home out on Islesboro, and there's a great demand for transporting gravel, sand, road salt and things of that nature out to the island.
Nowadays, even for older properties, there's a large focus on getting their septic systems up to code. I'm getting a lot of calls from people who have a 100-year-old house out on a little island, and they got a visit from the code enforcement officer for that township who told them that the old wooden tank they're pumping into wasn't going to work for much longer. And you're just not going to carry bucket loads of gravel or sand out on lobster boat. You've got to find a better way to get it there. It turns out that we do a real fair amount of that.
We've also been involved in some very large landscaping jobs. You have some high-end people buying on the islands, they feel the need to further beautify something that's already pretty gorgeous. So throw in hundreds and hundreds of trees ˆ literally hundreds of trees and shrubs ˆ and tons and tons of raw aggregate, we supply the means to get that out there.
You mentioned advertising. Do you get much work from ads you've placed?
Our very first ad was in The Working Waterfront, and then we were down the coast and I met Bill Crowe in Winter Harbor, and he had the Fishermen's Voice publication and he said we should advertise with him. So our second ad went into Fishermen's Voice. And for the first couple of years I advertised in Down East, and I got a lot of calls. But I felt I was aiming more at the guys who were going to be reading The Working Waterfront and Fishermen's Voice, because the fishermen in many instances serve as caretakers on the smaller islands. I was looking at the guys who were going to tell the [island] owners, "Hey, I know how we can get this done."
What does it cost to hire Sea Truk for the day?
We operate our vessel on a daily rate, which right now is $2,500 a day. That [rate] allows us to absorb the total cost of running the business through the year as much as what it does what it might cost on a given day. A lot of our work requires more fuel and more personnel, and others don't require as much. But I can't really change the daily rate from what it is for each individual.
I would imagine the LARCs eat up a fair amount of fuel.
Fuel costs are triple what they were even just two years ago. [The trucks] will go through 30-35 gallons an hour, depending on what the conditions are and how much weight we've got on deck. It's not really so bad for something that has four big thirsty diesel engines on it. But at $2.50 plus a gallon, approaching three dollars a gallon, it's getting pretty expensive. It's caused us to increase our prices two years in a row just to keep up with that. Otherwise it would be pretty difficult to pay our bills.
What are some of the projects you're working on now?
Well, I'm at my desk putting a quote on a power distribution cable running out to an island. So that requires me to go ahead and hire an electrician who will be on site when we install the conduit and pull the cable. That's their specialty, and I'll bring in the people that are necessary to get the job done.
We also do riprap installations, where someone's got erosion problems. Maybe they've plunked a house down on a bluff, the trees were in the way and the trees went down and now there's nothing holding the bank together and they're starting to lose their front yard and their septic. We've had quite a few of those jobs.
I've also had a couple of phone calls for timber harvesting on the islands. That situation is something that I guarantee we'll have more of in that the forests on most of the islands are approaching maturity. I've visited several that are beyond the point of successfully going in and harvesting to keep them healthy. Most of the islands are strictly spruce, and when they reach 80 years old, they're pretty much done. They don't live forever.
You recently carried equipment to a paper mill. Tell me about that.
We carried what were the centerpieces for a $14 million upgrade to the International Paper mill in Bucksport. It's a debarking machine and it comes in three drum sections. We were chartered by a transportation company for that job.
How big were those pieces?
The heaviest piece was 70 tons. The two others were smaller ˆ they were the end pieces to the machine ˆ and they were 35-40 tons. We were ready to carry that piece no matter what. We're comfortable with a top end weight load of 80 tons, and that's typical if we're carrying raw aggregates like crushed rock or gravel. Three large truckloads in the cargo bay is about 60 tons. The vessels were designed to carry 60-ton tanks, and they have an emergency rating of 100 tons, which is equal to the weight of the vessel. But they were designed with 11 sealed compartments throughout the lower hull, which gives it so much buoyancy.
So this is the start of your busy season?
It follows with the weather. We've taken aim at mid March to begin. Then I've always tried to end everything by December, but the last couple of years have dragged into January.
Is this a full-time job for you?
I still do some construction work and some caretaking work [at an inn in Lincolnville]. I do some caretaking and [Mary Ann] does some innkeeping. It's typically about a sixty-forty split in favor of SeaTruk. I have to juggle. It's not easy to set up a schedule for my side activities. [Sea Truk] always takes precedence.
But during his stint as a yacht captain, Barrett, 47, also spent plenty of time sailing the waters of New England. And during his travels, he noticed the vast number of inhabited islands dotting Casco and Penobscot bays. Among those rocky island outposts sprouted with tall pines, Barrett saw a business opportunity. The inhabited islands, he figured, needed good, reliable transportation for more than just the island's people. They also needed a way to bring out loads of lumber to build a home, or tons of crushed gravel to build and repair roads. For generations, says Barrett, those materials were brought over load by load in lobster boats ˆ a stack of two-by-fours here, a load of sand and stone there. Barrett thought there had to be an easier way.
So in early 2000, Barrett began scouring government auction listings for giant U.S. Army amphibious vehicles, the kind of vessels that could navigate choppy waters and still drive up the beach to unload a fleet of assault tanks. Barrett eventually found two such vessels ˆ dubbed LARCs, for lighter, amphibious resupply cargo ˆ and he and his wife plowed their savings into picking them up from auction and transporting them to Maine. Barrett wouldn't say exactly how much he paid for the vessels, but a quick scan of yacht brokers shows LARCs currently being sold for a few hundred thousand dollars to more than a half a million. Barrett, however, says he got a good deal. "In comparison to what the government spent to maintain them, I paid pennies on the dollar," he laughs.
The pair in 2001 launched Sea Truk LLC in Islesboro, and since then the company has worked from downeast points like Machiasport to Bustin's Island in Casco Bay. Mainebiz recently caught Barrett on a rare slow day in April ˆ the start of Sea Truk's busy season ˆ to discuss how his amphibious vehicles serve the island construction business. The following is an edited transcript.
Mainebiz: What kinds of work does Sea Truk typically get calls for?
Dave Barrett: Primarily, what we do is involved with private development, mostly home development on the smaller islands. We've ranged pretty much the entire coast ˆ anywhere you can find islands. I could list the harbors and the islands, but the list is getting pretty long by now.
We get calls not only from people who have existing homes, but people who are interested in developing a new piece of property. Needless to say, when you're doing a new piece, you're starting from the ground up, and we end up contracting and subcontracting in a manner that gets the clients the equipment they need, the building materials they need and the workers they need.
So you're not just ferrying the equipment back and forth from the mainland?
It's more of a contracting position. If the phone rings first for me on a project, then more the better, because I'm able to coordinate the marine part and I also get a piece of the project in terms of contracting it out and subcontracting it out. I have the key to the lock in that we're able to access the islands.
Before Sea Truk, how was this work done?
Traditionally, it had been done largely by lobster boat. There were smaller operations going back through the years that guys had up and down the coast where they would utilize small barges or floats, but it was rudimentary and arduous and expensive. Because if you're just loading up a regular lobster boat full of lumber, you're bringing it over, you're dropping it off at the shoreline and you're carting this stuff all the way up to the building site. We're able to put a tremendous load on the vessel and, in many cases, climb right up to the island surface.
Looking at the trucks, it kind of seems like you're mounting an invasion of construction equipment.
It kind of feels like that sometimes. It doesn't fail to still provide the thrill that it did right from the start. The [LARCs] are really massive machines, and they really defy the norm in their size and their ability to move all that equipment.
Because they're so massive they also seem pretty expensive. How did you fund the start of the business?
I funded the company on my own, and I didn't have an unlimited amount of funding. I was able to purchase the boats and fund them to the point where I was able to get the boats in Maine and ready to work.
It wasn't a cheap endeavor, not when you're talking about money that you've accrued over your work lifespan. But I was lucky enough to find a silent partner that carried me the last mile and really put us into business. That was all a revelation: You get an idea, you execute on it and physically make things happen, but the reality of advertising and the cost of being in business really kicks in. If you can't advertise, the phone won't ring and then you can't even pay your phone bills. So there were a lot of startup costs and that's where I brought in a partner, and that's the way Sea Truk LLC is organized.
Has business been as strong as you expected?
In the five years that I've been in business, it's caused me to stop and think, "Wow, would I stop and do this all over again?" But you don't know where the journey's going to take you. And I feel better now than I did two years ago about our possibilities for growth. I'm excited about it. We're looking at quite a bit of work coming up this year, and that's based on phone calls that date back a year. That's because it takes people quite a bit of time to get projects organized on an island.
What were some of your first jobs when you launched Sea Truk?
The supply of aggregates was one of the things that I focused on right from the start. We have a home out on Islesboro, and there's a great demand for transporting gravel, sand, road salt and things of that nature out to the island.
Nowadays, even for older properties, there's a large focus on getting their septic systems up to code. I'm getting a lot of calls from people who have a 100-year-old house out on a little island, and they got a visit from the code enforcement officer for that township who told them that the old wooden tank they're pumping into wasn't going to work for much longer. And you're just not going to carry bucket loads of gravel or sand out on lobster boat. You've got to find a better way to get it there. It turns out that we do a real fair amount of that.
We've also been involved in some very large landscaping jobs. You have some high-end people buying on the islands, they feel the need to further beautify something that's already pretty gorgeous. So throw in hundreds and hundreds of trees ˆ literally hundreds of trees and shrubs ˆ and tons and tons of raw aggregate, we supply the means to get that out there.
You mentioned advertising. Do you get much work from ads you've placed?
Our very first ad was in The Working Waterfront, and then we were down the coast and I met Bill Crowe in Winter Harbor, and he had the Fishermen's Voice publication and he said we should advertise with him. So our second ad went into Fishermen's Voice. And for the first couple of years I advertised in Down East, and I got a lot of calls. But I felt I was aiming more at the guys who were going to be reading The Working Waterfront and Fishermen's Voice, because the fishermen in many instances serve as caretakers on the smaller islands. I was looking at the guys who were going to tell the [island] owners, "Hey, I know how we can get this done."
What does it cost to hire Sea Truk for the day?
We operate our vessel on a daily rate, which right now is $2,500 a day. That [rate] allows us to absorb the total cost of running the business through the year as much as what it does what it might cost on a given day. A lot of our work requires more fuel and more personnel, and others don't require as much. But I can't really change the daily rate from what it is for each individual.
I would imagine the LARCs eat up a fair amount of fuel.
Fuel costs are triple what they were even just two years ago. [The trucks] will go through 30-35 gallons an hour, depending on what the conditions are and how much weight we've got on deck. It's not really so bad for something that has four big thirsty diesel engines on it. But at $2.50 plus a gallon, approaching three dollars a gallon, it's getting pretty expensive. It's caused us to increase our prices two years in a row just to keep up with that. Otherwise it would be pretty difficult to pay our bills.
What are some of the projects you're working on now?
Well, I'm at my desk putting a quote on a power distribution cable running out to an island. So that requires me to go ahead and hire an electrician who will be on site when we install the conduit and pull the cable. That's their specialty, and I'll bring in the people that are necessary to get the job done.
We also do riprap installations, where someone's got erosion problems. Maybe they've plunked a house down on a bluff, the trees were in the way and the trees went down and now there's nothing holding the bank together and they're starting to lose their front yard and their septic. We've had quite a few of those jobs.
I've also had a couple of phone calls for timber harvesting on the islands. That situation is something that I guarantee we'll have more of in that the forests on most of the islands are approaching maturity. I've visited several that are beyond the point of successfully going in and harvesting to keep them healthy. Most of the islands are strictly spruce, and when they reach 80 years old, they're pretty much done. They don't live forever.
You recently carried equipment to a paper mill. Tell me about that.
We carried what were the centerpieces for a $14 million upgrade to the International Paper mill in Bucksport. It's a debarking machine and it comes in three drum sections. We were chartered by a transportation company for that job.
How big were those pieces?
The heaviest piece was 70 tons. The two others were smaller ˆ they were the end pieces to the machine ˆ and they were 35-40 tons. We were ready to carry that piece no matter what. We're comfortable with a top end weight load of 80 tons, and that's typical if we're carrying raw aggregates like crushed rock or gravel. Three large truckloads in the cargo bay is about 60 tons. The vessels were designed to carry 60-ton tanks, and they have an emergency rating of 100 tons, which is equal to the weight of the vessel. But they were designed with 11 sealed compartments throughout the lower hull, which gives it so much buoyancy.
So this is the start of your busy season?
It follows with the weather. We've taken aim at mid March to begin. Then I've always tried to end everything by December, but the last couple of years have dragged into January.
Is this a full-time job for you?
I still do some construction work and some caretaking work [at an inn in Lincolnville]. I do some caretaking and [Mary Ann] does some innkeeping. It's typically about a sixty-forty split in favor of SeaTruk. I have to juggle. It's not easy to set up a schedule for my side activities. [Sea Truk] always takes precedence.
Mainebiz web partners
Most Recent
Most Recent
Comments