River Pilots in Louisiana for dummies

As everyone on here knows by now, River pilots in Louisiana make damn good money. Their average salary is right around 650,000, but there are a lot of things people on here don’t understand about the job and the maritime industry as a whole.

In order to be a pilot, the first step one could take is to attended an maritime academy. There are only 7 in the US. Maine Maritime Academy, Massachusetts Maritime Academy, Texas A&M at Galveston, California Maritime Academy, Great Lakes Maritime Academy, SUNY Maritime, and the US Merchant Marine Academy (a federal service academy).

You cannot join an association without a 4 year degree from one of those schools. Also in order for you to get a degree from one of those schools you have to go through a rigorous academic course load with Coast Guard requirements, and also pass a 7 test CG exam where most of the tests require a 90% to pass.

After that, you must have a certain amount of days at sea in order to even be considered for the selection process. Then you have to be approved by the pilot board to even start an apprenticeship, and that consists of about a year of working and going with pilots. If all that goes well, which for some people it doesn’t, the association then has to vote you in. This is where the nepotism comes into play. Yes it greatly benefits you to have connections in order to get all of the votes you need, but is it necessary? No. There are plenty of people who have worked there butts off during their apprenticeship to build connections before they’re voted in, and it’s worked for them. After you get voted in you do not start making the big bucks. In order to do that, you have to buy into the association. Think of this as doctors or lawyers buying into a practice. It’s basically the same situation.

Now about how much they make. Yes, they get paid about 650,000 as I said before but they are considered independent contractors and thus have to pay about half of that back in taxes. So let’s just say they take home about 375,000 which is still great money. Most of them also have drivers through a company to take them too and from ships and terminals. Most of these drivers are tipped by the pilots so that’s where the extra roughly 40,000 comes into play as a transportation fee not including the miles on their trucks and their own gas. So yes they get paid extremely well, but they also have a job that can be dangerous at times and could destroy Louisiana’s ecosystem and potentially shut down the river which would have a significant impact on Louisiana’s economy.

Let’s just say that there was a pilot on board and they screwed up and ran an oil tanker aground. Now you have a ship carrying roughly 150,000 tons of oil dumping its cargo into the river. Just think about how that would shutdown the river and cause devastating damage to the environment. Not to mention pilots have to climb aboard moving ships on rope ladders in all types of weather, have to deal with foreign crews who usually don’t speak English very well, and have to guide ships which are in unknown shape and can be very different in how they steer. (If you want to learn more about the steering look up the differences between left and right pitch propellers, ship squat, bank effect ect)

They last time a ship caused major damage in the river was when a ship that completely lost steering hit they warehouses near the river walk. That ship could have easily caused mass casualties if it had hit other place in the river. While there has not been anything like that more recently, in the past ships have caused major loss of life on the river like the Lulling ferry disaster in the 70’s. The threat of a ship causing damage in the river is a very real one contrary to popular belief. The Mississippi River is dangerous during all times of the year but especially around high river when the current can easily be pushing 6 knots and cause eddies in the river. Every year ships at anchor break free and start drifting down the river and pilots have to quickly get on board and get the ships back to a safe area.

If you’ve made it this far and still want to discuss the pilots I’d love to have a discussion about it with you. Do they get paid a damn good salary even AFTER taxes? Yes. But they do a lot of the state of Louisiana and they keep our economy alive and our ecosystems safe.