Re: CSL scrappings

From: Eric
Location: MN
email:
Remote Name: 68.191.150.144
Date: 12.29.06
Time: 10:26:46 PM

Comments

It is often said that CSL tends to run their ships hard with less year-to-year maintenance and a shorter life expectancy in mind. If this is true, then they spend less money on constant, extensive maintenance (which would mean a longer life for a ship) and spend more money on either completely rebuilding a ship when it wears out after 25-35 years or building a totally new replacement. That would explain the seemingly early retirements of the Tarantau, Manitoulin, Saguenay, etc. Had things been better on the Canadian side when those ships wore out, you would have likely seen them either totally rebuilt (like the Tadoussac) or replaced with newbuilds. However during the late 1980s and 1990s overall demand for Canadian lakers seems to have averaged downward; that's probably why a lot of those ships were never replaced. In the Quetico/Whitefish Bay's case, her self-unloading gear was worn out by the early 1980s and needed expensive rebuilding. CSL had plenty of self-unloaders then, but what they really needed were hulls to carry the tremendous amounts of grain that moved through the Canadian side of the lakes in the late 1970s and early 1980s, so they reconfigured the Quetico/Whitefish Bay for the grain trade. By the late 1980s that tonnage had fallen off and she was probably showing her age (she was one of the earlier 730s built), so she was retired.