Alaska tugs & barges: delivering to Alaskans rain or shine.

• Author: Anderson, Tom
• Position: TRANSPORTATION

Go to any elementary school library and there's bound to be a book or two on tug boats. Tugs, barges, and pulling and pushing cargo in stormy seas are as much a part of the American maritime tradition and marine ethos as "deadliest catch" commercial fishing and the prominence of the country's US Coast Guard protecting domestic waters.

The tug and barge industry touches every single person's life in Alaska because of the spectrum of deliveries brought to and taken from Alaska, foundational to commerce at all levels.

The American Waterways Operators

The American Waterways Operators is the national advocate for the US tugboat, towboat, and barge industry. Waterways and ports support more than forty-one thousand Alaska jobs and directly contribute $6 billion to the state's economy. Vessels on the waters of Alaska move 36 million tons of domestic freight every year, including $2.2 billion in agricultural and food products. Barge transportation is the primary means of delivering food to market shelves in many isolated Alaska communities.

American Waterways Operators' latest statistical data highlights more than 900 large container ships, tankers, and bulk cargo vessels call at Alaska ports each year. More than forty tugboat and barge companies are headquartered in Alaska, operating more than 140 vessels. More than twenty thousand pieces of military cargo have passed through the Port of Anchorage over the past eight years. American Waterways Operators notes the Port of Anchorage was designated a Department of Defense Nationally Strategic seaport in 2006.

The organization emphasizes how crucial the industry remains in Alaska, injecting over $3.1 billion in personal income and $1.9 billion in direct business revenue to the state economy. Alaska is home to 5,500 miles of inland waterways, the most of any state in the nation. Alaska ports handle over 46 million short tons of cargo every year.

Alaska's Northwest Coast is home to the world's largest zinc mine, accounting for 10 percent of the world's production. Tugboats are critical to safely transporting zinc ore from the mine's shallow port to bulk ships that cannot safely transit in shallow waters notes Charles Constanzo, vice president of American Waterways Operators' Pacific Region.

Constanzo referenced $1.6 billion in manufactured products such as clothing, food, consumer products, computers, and machinery being shipped to and from Alaska through waterways and ports, while the state serves as a major energy hub for the United States and globally through petroleum products worth $1.6 billion moving on its waterways.

Vitus Marine

For some tug and barge operators, the marine industry is part of their ancestry.

Mark Smith earned his sea legs at an early age growing up near Dillingham, tucked away at the confluence of the Nushagak River in the Bristol Bay region of southwestern Alaska. In 1934 his family entered the tug and barge business as Smith Lighterage Company. Starting in 1973 Smith worked over Alaska summers as a commercial fisherman and third-generation tug operator.

The mosaic of ownership in the industry, with employee and customer crossovers, has been the result of numerous acquisitions over the last twenty years, explains Smith. The family business was merged into Northland Services in 1999. Smith transferred to Yukon Fuel that same year and would later join Crowley upon its purchase of Yukon. By 2009 Smith wanted to continue his family's legacy and started his own marine services company.

Vitus Bering took the seas in the early 1700s. A Danish mariner and officer in Peter the Great's Russian Navy, he is known for sailing through what is now named the Bering Strait. Smith liked Bering's tenacity and courage, forming Vitus Energy in 2009. Within this parent company, subsidiaries include aviation, terminal operation, and marine services.

Vitus Marine is the tug and barge arm of the business. Customers are scattered across the state from the Aleutian Islands to the Arctic Circle and inland on rivers such as the Kobuk, Nushagak, Kuskokwim, Kvichak, and Yukon. Upon re-entering the market, serendipity and strategy led Smith and his partners to Meera Kohler, president and CEO of the Alaska Village Electric Cooperative, a nonprofit electric utility serving fifty-six communities in Western and Interior Alaska. Alaska Village Electric Cooperative funded the construction and leased to Vitus its initial flagships, two articulating tug and barge vessels. Cost-effective, faster, and safer deliveries of fuel were the results.

Vitus has grown on the foundation of safe, reliable operations. With six barges, four tugs, and three landing crafts, 85 percent of the company's business and revenue comes from marine fuel delivery. However the complexity of physical location is what makes services tenuous at times.

"We're dealing with the delivery of fuel, and the communities are dependent on this for their utilities, schools, city and village operations, and for personal and commercial use, so every shipment is critical," says Smith. "That said, very few Alaskan docks afford easy access, so we're landing on beaches and we're hiring the best captains who have the local knowledge of the region's waterways...