How to build a six-figure career on America’s rivers — no degree required. Eighteen years on the boats, from green deckhand to the wheelhouse, written down straight: what pays, what it costs you, and exactly how to get on.
Not a brochure and not a sea-story collection — a working map. Every chapter comes from years of living it, with the numbers, the paperwork, and the mistakes left in.
Which companies hire green hands, what the recruiter call actually sounds like, and the paperwork wall — TWIC, MMC, physical, drug screen — knocked down step by step.
The first-hitch shock, the unwritten rules of a steel boat, and the small daily habits that decide who gets asked back and who gets run off.
Deckhand to captain day rates cross-checked against current industry wage data — plus how twice-a-month boat checks actually work and what to do with them.
The credential jump that roughly doubles a deckhand’s pay inside the first couple of years — what a tankerman’s day really looks like and how to get the endorsement.
Sea time math, the steersman route, and what changes — in pay and in weight on your shoulders — when you first slide the chair over.
The last chapter is a launch calendar: what to file, what to buy, what to say on the phone, and what it costs — a green hand’s first month, planned out day by day.
The book keeps the honest parts in: who washes out and why, what a 28-day hitch does to a family, the nights that go wrong. There are no guaranteed-earnings promises anywhere in it — the pay numbers are real and sourced, and the “$30K to $80K” road is shown the way it actually happens: earned, over the first year or two, by hands who push for it.
If the river isn’t for you, the book will tell you that too — better to find out for ten dollars than one hitch in.
The book points back to the free tools on this site — use them together and you’re ahead of every other green hand in the pile.
See what any rate really pays on your rotation — per hitch, per month, per year.
Rig a barge and learn which line stops what — before you ever step aboard.
Chapter 3 tells you how to get hired — the profile puts you in front of the companies doing the hiring.
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