Barge company taps retirees’ experience
BROWNSVILLE – Although it has only been building barges in Brownsville since 2006, Brownsville Marine Products is tapping into the wealth of knowledge of “its” retirees.BMP Friday hosted a lunch gathering for 16 “Hillman Barge Alumni,” a group of men primarily in their 70s and 80s now, who have a combined total of 578 years experience at Hillman Barge. “We have an extremely young group of people working for us now,” Bob Crankovic, BMP’s controller, told the alumni. “One thing that impressed us is how well you worked with one another and how much you respect one another.”
Crankovic said those are qualities the current management wants to instill in the new employees. He also said the fledgling barge firm needs input from the retired workers.
“Five hundred seventy eight years – that’s a lot of wisdom here and we’d like to tap into that,” Crankovic said.
Hillman Barge operated in Brownsville from 1939 through 1989, when the facility was sold to Trinity Industries of Dallas. In 1995 Trinity closed the Brownsville shipyard, moving operations south.
“When Trinity finally left, they said barges would never be made again in Brownsville,” said Dave Tatka, the administration manager at BMP.
Tatka said that while a few attempts were made to revitalize the closed plant since 1995, all eventually failed. BMP bought the shipyard out of bankruptcy in late 2005.
“Millions of dollars in investment were made to make this place operational. Now we’re a major player. We launch two barges a week and in a good week, three or four,” Tatka said.
The company employs 285 people, working three shifts. BMP would like to add another 100 to 150 employees. Jerry Matchett, the company’s production manager, said BMP would like to offer employees more flexible schedules.
“Fifty to 60 hours a week starts to get to the guys,” Matchett said.
“We’d like to have skilled people, but mostly we just need people. We can train them,” Tatka said. “We put a very strong emphasis on safety. We want all of our employees to go home at the end of their shift exactly the way they came in. We tell our employees there’s no barge we launch that’s worth anybody’s pinky, let alone their life.”
The alumni noted that safety was always a high priority at the shipyard. It was not unusual in the HBC days to find multiple generations from the same family working together. Russ Petrosky, BMP’s chief draftsman, remembers going to work with his father, two brothers and several cousins when HBC owned the company.
“I started out as a laborer and a position opened up through the union in lofting, which is developing the shapes for barges, primarily the hulls,” Petrosky said. “My dad taught me the business of building barges, then the company offered me training in drafting.”
Petrosky said he worked for Trinity after that company took over, but decided not to relocate when the Brownsville shipyard closed. His father, Abe Petrosky, was among the alumni now considering offering his assistance to BMP as a teacher to the new employees or to serve on an advisory committee. About a half dozen of the retirees said they’d be interested in helping the new firm.
Among the alumni was Ira Singleton, the former Hillman vice president, general manager and design engineer. Even as the barge was being launched Friday, Singleton was scribbling figures based on the barge’s 330-ton weight to determine how much water it would draft when empty. He estimated 15 to 18 inches, which appeared to be exactly where the barge sat after it was launched. When full, the barge will sit considerably lower in the water, drafting nearly 12 feet, Singleton said.
Bill Amos, who worked as a machinist leader most of the 37 years he was with HBC, said the main difference between the plant today and the plant under Hillman was the amount of money available to put into the facility.
“When I was here, Henry Hillman had billions. They (BMP) have got a ways to go, but I think they’re going to go. They know what they’re doing. Hillman had the money to be more sophisticated in their equipment. We used to launch a barge a day, but that was three shifts with 600 people here,” Amos said.
The alumni were asked to fill out a brief survey form, noting anything during the tour positive or negative that surprised them, anything they saw that that needs to be improved, anything that impressed them and whether they’d be interested in teaching or serving as an advisor.
“You build a good, straight barge,” Abe Petrosky said. “The knuckle’s beautiful.”
The knuckle is the curved edge where the side and bottom meet at the front of the barge.
“The frame’s fitting good. When it comes to the hand welding, you need a little more finesse there,” Abe Petrosky said.
“Fifty-five to 60 percent of our workforce has six months experience or less, and many of them had never struck an arc before coming here,” Tatka said.
Woody Nicholson, who retired from HBC after 36 years, praised the neatness of the plant.
“I think the plants real nice and clean. As far as safety purposes, you’re in real good shape,” Nicholson said.
Nicholson noted that he had worked at HBC with his father and brother and that many of the men around the table with him Friday were the very men he had learned from.
Harley “Red” Watson, who worked at HBC for 23 years, was impressed with the paint job on the new barge. Singleton cautioned that the supervisors need to keep a close eye on the work at all times, or the plant could end up with costly repairs. He recommends one supervisor for every 15 employees. The company currently has one for every 17 workers.
Jerry DeWitt, who worked for HBC for 44 years, starting right out of high school, said keeping good welders is nothing new to the barge industry.
“We had some of the same problems you have. We’d train welders, then they’d go to the mines where the pay was better,” DeWitt said.
Jerome Lowery suggested improvements in materials handling. He also thanked BMP for reopening the facility.
“I’m glad to see you made a certain barge maker eat their words that there’d never be another barge built here,” Lowery said.
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