Why this, why now

Under the crane

Thirty years ago I was making ship deliveries for Wilhelmsen (formerly Unitor Ships Service) up and down the Northeast corridor. New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Connecticut, Boston, Maine. Vessel to vessel, port to port.

The thing nobody tells you about that job is that you don't really meet the ship. You meet the same handful of people, over and over, for years. The paint supplier. The rope supplier. The deck supplier. The engine supplier. Every vessel, there they were — different ship, same faces. We'd line up alongside the ship together, waiting our turn under the crane. Whoever got there first left first. Whoever got there last left last. That's just how it worked. Still is.

Some of my best relationships in this business were formed standing in that line. Not in an office, not over email — underneath a crane, waiting, talking about the same things everybody talks about when they're waiting: family, the job, trying to get home in time for dinner.

Different companies, different trucks, same desire — get the delivery done, get paid, go feed your family. Competitors on paper. Something closer to friends in that line.

Thirty years later, I'm still in the same industry, and nothing has changed. The same companies are still lining up alongside the same ships, each still managing their own trucks, all still waiting their turn to pull under the same crane, for cargo that could have been consolidated. Nobody built anything to fix it. I kept waiting for someone else to. Technology's changed everything else in our industry twice over, but no one ever did anything to fix this.

I loved what I did, and some of my fondest memories happened under the crane, and I would not change that for the world. But from a commercial perspective, we could have all been doing something far more productive for our companies.

I think you have to have stood in that line to really appreciate the inefficiency. It's not a problem you find in a spreadsheet. You find it by being the fourth truck in a five-truck queue, watching four other drivers you know by name wait for the same crane you're waiting for, and realizing all five of you are delivering to the same ship.

Shiplivery is what I wish someone had built thirty years ago: one truck, five suppliers, one stop at the vessel instead of five trucks idling in the same line. The mechanism is simple — post the load, match it to the truck already headed to your vessel, split the cost. What isn't simple is knowing which line to build it for.

I know that line. I've stood in it.