Growing Barge Company Making Splash in Valley

Washington PA Observer Reporter
14 August 2011
By Scott Beveridge, Staff writer
sbeveridge@observer-reporter.com

BROWNSVILLE - The new 350-ton steel barge quickly slid down a ramp into the Monongahela River, causing the ground to rumble and creating a giant splash Monday.

It took workers at Brownsville Marine Products just six eight-hour shifts to weld together plates of steel to create the giant covered box barge, which will be used to haul grain, chemicals or fertilizer, said Tim Scheib, BMP's president and chief executive officer.

"The country needs more barges," Scheib said, when the Brownsville company opened its gates to allow visitors a rare glimpse of a barge launch.

The company also has billed itself as a success story in the struggling Fayette County borough with a downtown lined with boarded-up storefronts.

BMP purchased the company in federal bankruptcy court in November 2005 and turned what many considered a hopeless barge yard into a competitive business.

With 302 employees, BMP is planning an expansion that should add another 50 workers to the payroll in another nine months. By then, Scheib said, the company wants to increase its production by one or two barges a month. At present, its welders and painters turn out 14 barges a month, he said.

BMP would prefer to hire local residents.

"We are struggling to find workers," Scheib said.

BMP is one of just three companies in the United States that produces barges for inland navigation. The others are Jeffboat in Jeffersonville, Ind., and Trinity Marine Products Inc. in Dallas, Texas.

"We are the smallest, but we make the best barges," said Scheib, a 1973 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy with an engineering degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Hillman Barge Co. began producing barges at the Brownsville site in 1939 and sold the yard more than a decade ago to Trinity, Scheib said.

Trinity owned the factory for a year before removing most of its major equipment, "intending barges would never be built here again." he said. Two other companies later failed in their attempts to reopen the barge yard until BMP took ownership of the property at 1800 Paul Thomas Blvd.

Production started in February 2006, and its first barge was launched April 26 of that year. BMP uses steel produced in the United States and also repairs barges for Consol Energy, based in Southpointe.

A third-class welder is hired here at $9.50 an hour and has the opportunity to move into a first-class position within a year and increase his salary to $17 an hour, Scheib said.

"It's a great place to work," he said.

The gray covered box barges are 13 feet tall, 195 feet long and 35 feet wide. They are manufactured and painted indoors and then moved around the yard hydraulically, pulled by a winch.

Once dropped into the Mon amid cheers from the crowd, the barge was corralled by a tugboat and moored pending delivery.

Debra Keefer, who attended from Mon Valley Regional Chamber of Commerce in Charleroi, applauded the jobs the company has created.

"The jobs are the catalyst for anything else that might happen," Keefer said. "It's going to fuel our economy."