06/22/2023
WONDER WHY TRANSPORTING HOUSEBOATS IS ASTRONOMICAL IN PRICE ?!? WONDER NO MORE. HERES YOUR “REALITY CHECK.” (Long Read, but worth it if you want answers)
It’s 1:30 am. Can’t sleep. Im in a small town in New Mexico. All we’ve had is one problem after another……. and we’re only 1/2 way to our destination.
I guess you could say, we either jump in with both feet or we don’t jump in at all. Well, as most of you know- we are not afraid of challenges. We’ve always tried to be the “yes” company for our clients, but this transport will take us further then we’ve ever been and has made me “rethink” the idea of transporting houseboats outside of Page.
We picked up this boat a few years ago and the way the previous owner built the shell, made it about 20’ tall when on a trailer. Didn’t think much of it at the time because the boat, at that time was staying in Page or at Powell. No big deal. Well, now comes the day after a long process of rebuilding and remodeling the boat, time to transport it to Navajo Dam, NM.
Here’s where the “reality check” comes in. We set ourselves up this year so that we could have control of when we could do lake testing with the boats we rebuild. Jeremy and the crew at Gunsight have been great with us over the past 3 years, but it’s tough to have them wait for us as the boat is being float tested or weights and balances are being checked because that takes time and gunsight is always slammed. Plus, it gets pricey. So, we picked up a few trucks and spent the last 8 months trying to get a trailer, (that was safe) and here we are. The biggest benefit of doing all this was for our clients. If we are rebuilding or remodeling a boat in our yard, we generally don’t charge for these lake trips and we discount the launch and retrieval as an added bonus for being our client. Then the idea of transporting these boats to other lakes became an idea, turned into a reality. Our clients were having a tough time getting their boats to other lakes from Powell. So, we got that set up and what a headache when my background is not in the trucking industry.
Everyone “thinks”, it’s only a few hundred miles to transport my boat, how bad can it be?!? And why in the world is it costing me more to transport it then it did to purchase the old boat ?!?
Well, here’s the reasons that no one talks about…….
I’ve spent 8-10 weeks trying to source the right people, agencies, etc for permits that allow for a 20’ tall boat to be transported. Almost everyone I talked to was short on the phone and angry. I’m not in the trucking industry - I had no idea. BUT, I quoted our client a price to get his boat to Navajo and we stick to it. After all these weeks of hitting walls, I started to call “heavy haul” companies on the west coast. Most of these businesses wouldn’t touch it because of the height. I finally was referred to a company out of St George. This guy has been 110% “The Man”. It’s costing an arm and both legs, but he knows the ins and outs and has helped us all the way. He could have given up and said “see ya”, your on your own now or I’m too busy, but he didn’t. Thanks Jake Jeff’s.
This is how transport works. There has to be a certified company that comes out and physically drives the route, hitting ever wire height, stop light, bridge, penny on the ground detail. That report then has to be sent into the DOT for both states and turned in with our application. This is not cheap and does not happen overnight. We get a copy of that report, from a guy that has no idea how to transport a 14’x20’x70’ houseboat through a city of stop lights and not to mention - the great drivers that are in a hurry or texting and yelling at you because your going slow or blocking their path. So, we get into NM and we have no idea on the route since we have never driven it either. Here comes the reality. Stop lights are between 17’ and 19’ tall, most power wires are under 19’ off the ground, most intersections have stop lights that span all the way across the street and make it imposible to maneuver a 100’ long load on a diagonal to miss everything. Not to mention, the slow going pace and if we calculate a turn too soon or late, we are now in the middle of an intersection backing up and trying it again. The stress on the driver is unbelievable.
So, finally - this brings us to our trip. It’s been a miracle that all this came together. We had to set up highway patrol es**rts that had to come from Phoenix, a utility bucket company out of salt lake to raise power lines and a pilot company out of Farmington, NM - and they all had to meet at our shop at the same time and day to leave. Highway patrol was awesome. The pilot guys and bucket truck guys are solid as well and have stuck by us so far.
Everything was going smooth until we hit the NM boarder and all the sudden, NM DOT is wanting additional information before we can proceed. We’re in the middle of nowhere and cell service is spotty. It’s hot and we have a 100’ long load that just can’t pull over anywhere.
NM Dot already approved the route survey, but they are now wanting us to identify EVERY wire marked on the survey and get letters from these companies stating we have permission to raise their wires. These can be cable wires, communication wires, wires that have been dead for years and no one has removed them etc. So, we spend 3 hours driving from Shiprock to Navajo Dam, with flashers on, following Mile markers from the route survey, measuring the wires and taking pictures - trying to figure out what type of wire it is. What a joke….. Obviously, this isn’t going to work since I have no idea about these things. Not to mention we have over a dozen intersections that all have low wires and stop lights and the route survey is taking us down main st. 🤦🏻♂️There’s 3 intersections that are impassable for us because the way the stop lights cross cross each other.
So, now it’s Wednesday and the boat is still on the side of the road, and we get up this morning and I went to look for a new way to go that did not involve all the lights. We spent 3 hours making our own route survey with the pilot trucks and bucket truck. We had to measure each mile, each wire, and identify what type it was. We are south of Shiprock and are on Navajo roads. Now, I’ve got to say - the Navajo nation here has been awesome !!! They have been so nice to work with and are still helping us.
So, at this point, NM DOT is requiring permission/permit. from the Navajo nation to allow us to drive on their roads. But, there’s 3 districts within the nation that have to approve us before we get the permit. I finally got that approval today around 5:30 pm. We spent all day jumping through hoops and trying to figure out who to talk to and crossing fingers that they would work with us.
By this time, DOT is closed for the day and we will wait and see what comes up tomorrow morning to get the final permit to move the boat.
The amount of money that all this nonsense is going to cost me is HUGE. The amount of time that my crew has taken out of the week where we should have been at our yard working is going to cost me money and some ticked off clients. The amount of frustration my client has gone through over the past 4 months with this process and being that we are still having issues this close to it being delivered, is driving me nuts. The amount of “unknowns” is what ticks me off the most. This should have been much easier, but like everything else in this world, it’s a money issue and a ton of headaches.
I’m not writing this as a pity post. This is to inform boat owners of the challenges we have to go through, just to get your boat from one lake to another and the obstacles we have to jump over to get things done, sometimes having to take things into our own hands and do someone else’s job so we can get our job done.
I’ll put another post up once we get the boat delivered and let everyone know how this ends. 👊🏻
