Boat Held Hostage By Marine Transport Company

[Capt Phil]

Well said, avb3... Phil

[tropicalescape]

I have this guy on the phone right now and there is 2 sides of this story! Bob sent this boat to a lift that had no scale and was told that the boat weighed 19350 lb the reality is it weighs 27,500 lbs! he says he would have never touched the boat if he would of been privy to the weight....The FBI agent Mike Edmonton told him that it was a civil matter and to just deliver the boat when he could ...according to this guy Bob lied about the weight of the boat to get it moved cheaper.. then when the trailer had trouble the man started calling the law to no avail...the boat is in LA and the mast is for a boat that is a two year project that the man said was no hurry! If you want to call and get the story from the horses mouth he said to call him....I told you so! This man runs a good company and you can get info about some of the biggest companys that trust him...This man hauls boats and is raising his family and I can tell you from talking to him he is not worried...he said Bob wont call him and he needs his trailer back to haul more boats and that the boat is in a very safe place and when he gets the money for the damage to his trailer he will deliver the boat ..Bob was told the boat was a POS and to get it out of the yard and when they loaded it and found the problems the yard wouldnt let him unload it back in the yard...Dan says he has never experianced anything like this in 12 yrs. he said for the none belivers to call J-Boat and Sparcraft and that no one else would haul the boat !.. I dont know this man and dont have a dog in this fight....The mast will be delivered to Kemah in the near future! there is always two sides and we should all open our eyes and ears before we trash someone after hearing one side of a story,thats why he didnt want to mention the name of the company,that way you get his side and no other...

[RaceCell]

A very nice guy personally but we had a VERY bad experience professionally...... Boat delivery back from Mexico a few years ago. Boat got "blown" off the road by a passing 18-wheeler coming up from Cabo and broke an axel on our trailer. Accidents do happen but you would expect the trucker to fix the situation and continue on. Instead the boat was left 200 miles or so from the Cali border while he headed back east and we had no idea where the boat was. He said he had to take off to delivery boats for the Charleston Race week or such leaving us in the lurch for month or so before he returned to get the boat. When he did he did finally return he got more money out of the boat owner for the 2nd trip out to complete the delivery. To say the least the boat owner felt hostage to the situation and was more than worried about his boats location. Oh..... and he left the boat at the wrong boatyard in SoCal but luckily he was still in town and came back the same to day move it to the correct boatyard.

Not cool at all to quote an end-to-end shipment, fail, leave the boat in a foreign country to head off to make other deliveries instead of finishing ours and then charge more to complete the job.

[MarkSF]

To the OP : Can you let us know when you get your boat back?

[tropicalescape]

Originally Posted by RaceCell

A very nice guy personally but we had a VERY bad experience professionally...... Boat delivery back from Mexico a few years ago. Boat got "blown" off the road by a passing 18-wheeler coming up from Cabo and broke an axel on our trailer. Accidents do happen but you would expect the trucker to fix the situation and continue on. Instead the boat was left 200 miles or so from the Cali border while he headed back east and we had no idea where the boat was. He said he had to take off to delivery boats for the Charleston Race week or such leaving us in the lurch for month or so before he returned to get the boat. When he did he did finally return he got more money out of the boat owner for the 2nd trip out to complete the delivery. To say the least the boat owner felt hostage to the situation and was more than worried about his boats location. Oh..... and he left the boat at the wrong boatyard in SoCal but luckily he was still in town and came back the same to day move it to the correct boatyard.

Not cool at all to quote an end-to-end shipment, fail, leave the boat in a foreign country to head off to make other deliveries instead of finishing ours and then charge more to complete the job.

Its not nice to lie about the weight and then send himto a place with no scale...

[tropicalescape]

Originally Posted by MarkSF

To the OP : Can you let us know when you get your boat back?

accordian to the cops he can get it when he pays for it!

[MarkSF]

Originally Posted by tropicalescape

I have this guy on the phone right now and there is 2 sides of this story! Bob sent this boat to a lift that had no scale and was told that the boat weighed 19350 lb the reality is it weighs 27,500 lbs! he says he would have never touched the boat if he would of been privy to the weight....The FBI agent Mike Edmonton told him that it was a civil matter and to just deliver the boat when he could ...according to this guy Bob lied about the weight of the boat to get it moved cheaper.. then when the trailer had trouble the man started calling the law to no avail...the boat is in LA and the mast is for a boat that is a two year project that the man said was no hurry! If you want to call and get the story from the horses mouth he said to call him....I told you so! This man runs a good company and you can get info about some of the biggest companys that trust him...This man hauls boats and is raising his family and I can tell you from talking to him he is not worried...he said Bob wont call him and he needs his trailer back to haul more boats and that the boat is in a very safe place and when he gets the money for the damage to his trailer he will deliver the boat ..Bob was told the boat was a POS and to get it out of the yard and when they loaded it and found the problems the yard wouldnt let him unload it back in the yard...Dan says he has never experianced anything like this in 12 yrs. he said for the none belivers to call J-Boat and Sparcraft and that no one else would haul the boat !.. I dont know this man and dont have a dog in this fight....The mast will be delivered to Kemah in the near future! there is always two sides and we should all open our eyes and ears before we trash someone after hearing one side of a story,thats why he didnt want to mention the name of the company,that way you get his side and no other...

So the suggestion that the owner deliberately lied about the weight I have some suspicions about. I think most of us do not know the exact weight of our boats, but a reasonable approach would be to take the Sailboatdata or manufacturer's spec, and add a bit for all the stuff onboard. This is what the owner says he did.

How it gained 8000 lbs is a question. Another question would be, is the owner solely responsible for estimating the weight, or does the carrier have some responsibility for ensuring that his load is safe. I think if I were a judge I'd say 50/50 - the owner and carrier pay half each for the repairs.

[SVTatia]

As for the weight - a 34 foot boat @ 27,500 pounds? Wow!
Perhaps the displacement/ballast ration is 40/60.

[Sailmonkey]

Originally Posted by tropicalescape

Its not nice to lie about the weight and then send himto a place with no scale...

It's a pretty weak argument when he had only covered 250 miles before learning the true weight of the boat.

Even if he is a decent guy, he is being his own worst enemy by holding boats and masts hostage. Had he contacted the owner when he had the boat shifted and said, "I can't haul your boat any further, it's too heavy" none of this would have occurred.

In my humble opinion he has damaged his own equipment by knowingly hauling an overweight boat across the country.

As for the mast..........well, that just makes this guy something that the be nice rule doesn't permit me to say.

[MarkSF]

From the point of view of common sense it seems unlikely that the boat could be 8000 lbs heavier than a sistership AND 9000 lbs heavier than the manufacturer's data. So therefore it seems most likely that the load cell that gave 27500lbs is faulty, or the shipper is simply lying.

[Therapy]

I hope the bickering stops because I want to read to the end of the story.

[CCBullseye]

It sounds like the boat was full of rain water, like a thousand gallons of rain water, up to the galley counter top. How else could you explain a four ton difference? Assuming the hauler knows his stuff, how else could he have be so wrong at looking at the boat and miss estimating the weight, after all, he is a professional boat hauler, he would be able to look at a boat and know pretty close what it weights. Also, how else could an owner be so off on what his boat weighs. He knows what the builder/designer claimed displacement is, he knows his Documentation weight. The one who knew there were big problems is the yard for they refused to take the boat back. Now, how did the travel lift operator miss it, and how did the trucker miss it? I would assume that the trucker would have climbed up onto the boat, at least enough to look inside the ports. Boats can get lots of water in them sitting in the yard, leaves get into the cockpit, clog the drains, water fills over the companion way boards and fills the boat. I had this happen once.

I would like to hear if this was the case.

[skipmac]

Originally Posted by MarkSF

From the point of view of common sense it seems unlikely that the boat could be 8000 lbs heavier than a sistership AND 9000 lbs heavier than the manufacturer's data. So therefore it seems most likely that the load cell that gave 27500lbs is faulty, or the shipper is simply lying.

Agreed. And as another mentioned, 27,500 lbs for a 34' boat? Not impossible but that would be the heaviest 34' boat I know of. Even a Westsail 32, which is generally acknowledged to be a very heavy boat, only weighs in about 20,000 lbs. My 42' Pearson which is not exactly an ultralight racer is only spec'd at dry displacement of 21,000 lbs.

[tomfl]

Originally Posted by MarkSF

SNIP

How it gained 8000 lbs is a question. Another question would be, is the owner solely responsible for estimating the weight, or does the carrier have some responsibility for ensuring that his load is safe. I think if I were a judge I'd say 50/50 - the owner and carrier pay half each for the repairs.

Once the trucker took on the load he assumed responsibility. Not half the responsibility all the responsibility. Does anyone think a LEO from DOT at a weigh station found the boat overweight and the trucker said "it is the owners fault, he told me it weighed 8K less than the scales say" the LEO would buy it.

When the trucker found out there was no scale at the yard he had the option of requiring a valid weight before proceeding. Once he OKed the boat being put on his trailer without knowing what it weighed it was his responsibility.

Not sure what East Coast to West Coast means but El Paso is on 10 and it is not easy to get there without a long drive on 10 or 20, which means passing lots of weigh stations. If the break down did occur in El Paso the trucker knew well before he got there how much the load weighed. Even if the trucker went 250 miles before he knew how much the boat weighed (which to some extent shows close to gross negligence on his part) that still means he went well over a thousand miles knowing he was carrying 8k lbs more than he thought at the start.

This is assuming the boat did indeed weigh 8k more than advertised, something that still needs to be explained given what seems to be the generally accepted estimate of what that boat would weigh.

[tomfl]

Originally Posted by tropicalescape

SNIP

The FBI agent Mike Edmonton told him that it was a civil matter and to just deliver the boat when he could

SNIP

Before I retired I was a computer guy and did some automated accounting, my brother ran a small (7 trucks) trucking company. I really had a hard time convincing him that AR programs had 30, 60, 90, and 180 day buckets, he thought he should get paid on delivery.

While it is a civil matter that does not mean it won't become a criminal matter if the boat is not delivered. It is one thing to say I will not deliver your boat till you pay me more money. It is completely different to say I will not deliver your boat till you pay me more money and then keep the boat for say 180 days with out letting the owner know where the boat is.

Even if it remains in the civil area the trucker is in hot water. Insurance and bonding companies hate it when a lawyer sends them a letter saying the trucker you are covering has not delivered my boat and won't tell me where it is. When the insurance or bonding companies get a second letter saying the trucker you are covering has not delivered my mast per contract, where is it things get even worse. Without insurance and bonding lots of jobs are off limits to a trucker, and higher rates mean less profit.

The trucker does need to be worried.