The Northwest’s largest river transport company Vancouver-based Tidewater is celebrating its 75th year in business, and it has not been a quiet year for the company that operates on more than 460 miles of the Columbia and Snake river systems from the Port of Lewiston, Idaho, to the Port of Astoria, Ore.
In the past 75 years, Tidewater has seen commodities change up and down the river systems.
In the beginning, the company’s focus was mostly grain, said President and CEO Dennis McVicker.
Grain remains a major force but Tidewater has grown its petroleum business and has the job of shipping all of the solid waste in containers out of Clark County to Boardman, where it is then trucked to a landfill.
It’s not likely any of those markets will disappear any time soon, McVicker said.
Tidewater is eyeing a contract that will be up for bid with Portland-based Metro Solid Waste & Recycling. Through 2009, a trucking company uses 18,000 trucks per year to drive the waste collected to Arlington, Ore., and McVicker said Tidewater can put the waste on the river to ease road congestion and cutting pollution.
And biofuel, he said, is the next frontier.
Currently, Tidewater is the only company handling ethanol on the river system, said McVicker, whose background is in petroleum.
The company has been talking with Pacific Ethanol, which just built a brand new plant in Boardman. Within a couple of weeks, McVicker expects Tidewater to be moving ethanol down the river to Portland.
The company expects to be providing service to Cascade Grain, which has a 113-gallon ethanol plan under construction now at Clatskanie, Ore., to be operational in the first quarter of 2008.
Within the past few weeks, Tidewater unveiled a newly converted barge and completely re-powered tugboat.
The changes slash emissions and reduce fuel consumption.
The 284-foot barge, the New Vision – formerly barge 703 – was converted to double-hull construction in accordance with the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, which requires that all equipment transporting petroleum products be double-hull, with two complete layers of water-tight hull surface instead of just one, by 2015.
Tidewater is on track to have its petroleum barge fleet converted by 2010, McVicker said.
The company has a fleet of more than 140 barges – four of which are double-wide and used for petroleum and biofuel products only – and 15 tugboats.
New Vision, which has a capacity of 25,000 barrels, is the third petroleum barge to be converted, and a funding was approved to convert the fourth in 2008.
Its predecessors the New Dawn and the New Endeavor were refitted in 2004 and 2006, respectively.
The New Vision will be christened at 10:30 a.m. on Sept. 21 at Vancouver Landing, behind the Red Lion Inn at the Quay on the Columbia River. The public is invited.
The conversion took $3 million and 30,000 man hours, all done internally by Sundial Marine, a full-service shipyard in Troutdale, Ore, owned by Tidewater.
The company also reintroduced The Chief, its flagship tugboat named by former CEO Ray Hickey of Washougal.
The Chief was completely re-powered with new engines that boost fuel efficiency while cutting nitrogen oxide emissions by half and carbon monoxide and particulate matter by 85 percent each.
As an added bonus, the engines are dramatically quieter, allowing the crew to sleep more soundly. The goal there is to reduce fatigue and boost efficiency.
The conversion cost $2 million and also took place at Sundial Marine.
Engines have been ordered for two more tugboats that will be converted by 2009.
The Environmental Protection Agency through the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality awarded Tidewater Sept. 14 with a $120,000 grant toward the purchase of new engines for the next tugboat the company reconfigures.
THE TIDEWATER SMILEY FACE
Legend has it, Tidewater bought a barge operation from a company with a round logo. On a whim, former CEO Ray Hickey decided rather than tear off the logos, they should be painted over with a smiley face.
It stuck.
“It’s not like a consultant told us to do it,” said current President and CEO Dennis McVicker. “People connect well to it, and it kind of represents who we are as a company.”
