riverboat pilot salary

The Average Pay for a River Barge Pilot

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Pilot Duties

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Finding the average river boat pilot salary is tricky, due to the different titles used by these professionals. “River pilot,” “barge captain” and other titles are used, with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics describing these jobs as “water transportation workers” and “captains, mates and pilots” when providing salary information.

Some barge pilots earn six-figure salaries, bonuses and full benefits that include health insurance and retirement account contributions. You’ll be able to find the most accurate pay ranges if you use a salary aggregator job website or contact a state pilot’s association. Talking to barge pilots is another way to get the most accurate salary information. Reviewing the various job titles and work descriptions will help you narrow down your search and help you decide if this career is a good choice for you.

Barge Pilot Description

River barge pilots help guide barges from one point on a river to another, usually from port to port. Barges are large, usually low, long, flat boats that take on cargo, as opposed to passengers. Pilots transport a wide variety of freight, from large containers filled with consumer goods, agricultural products, machinery and other items, to autos, livestock and materials like sand or gravel.

Barge pilots use sonar, GPS systems, maps and other tools to avoid shoals, sandbars, shallows and other river hazards that can damage, strand or sink vessels. River barge pilots are not the same as tugboat captains. Tugboats don’t transport goods, but instead help guide the large ships and barges that transport them. They help “nudge” ships in a particular direction when the large vessel can’t make a sharp turn or avoid a waterway danger without help.

In addition to piloting their vessels, river barge pilots have a variety of pre-trip and post-trip activities and paperwork they must handle. It can take more than one day for a barge to reach its location, requiring pilots to sleep overnight on the vessel. In some instances, crew members can be on board for trips that last almost a month, with some trips lasting longer, according to maritime transportation service Marquette Transportation Company .

Depending on the state, pilots are limited to a specific number of hours they can work before being required to take a break of a specific amount of time. Marquette refers to six-hours-on/six-hours-off schedules. For this reason, there would be more than one pilot on board the vessel. During their free time, pilots and other crew members can pursue personal activities.

Crews live in close quarters on barges, so you should be comfortable working and socializing with the same people for days and weeks at a time. You’ll also be away from family, friends and pets for long periods, although you can contact them via your phone or computer.

Barge Pilot Education Requirements

The more education and experience you have, the quicker you’ll land a job, the higher the pay you’ll earn and the sooner you’ll be promoted. You can earn a bachelor’s degree in maritime transportation, then serve a multi-year apprenticeship on a river barge, according to the career website ZipRecruiter . This might include apprenticing on the same waterway where you’ll eventually work, because knowing a river’s peculiar features (such as where sandbars are, how the tides work and where it’s deep and shallow) is critical to avoiding errors that can cost a shipping company and client millions of dollars in damages.

When you’ve finished your internship, you will need to sit for and pass the United States Coast Guard National Maritime Center’s qualifications exam to earn your first-class license. Your license might limit your work, based on the ship tonnage and waterways you’re allowed to pilot.

Barge pilots must be licensed by their state’s pilot commission in almost every state, according to the American Pilot’s Association .

Some pilots become captains, while others work under captains, taking command when the captain is not on watch (i.e. taking his mandated break). This work can include overseeing crew and keeping in contact with the ship’s owner, the U.S. Coast Guard and port authorities.

To get a better feel for whether or not a career as a barge pilot is right for you, consider working as a deckhand or arrange for some type of apprenticeship so you can work several trips to see what the work is like. You can also set up informational interviews with barge captains (such as a breakfast or lunch meeting or phone call) to ask them about their jobs, how they would recommend you go about getting qualified and what the work will be like.

Barge Pilots Salary

According to SalaryExpert.com, the average base salary for a barge pilot (as of May 2020) was ​ $95,863 ​, with an average bonus of ​ $3,640 ​. This figure should not be used as a hard negotiating reference point for a river boat pilot salary for a variety of reasons. Factors that might affect your pay might include whether or not you belong to a union, how much experience you have, the current demand in the area where you will work and other typical salary considerations.

For example, according to a July 2020 article in the Louisiana newspaper The Advocate , river pilots in one part of the state were seeking an annual salary increase from ​ $526,958 ​ to ​ $697,000 ​ to earn the same pay as river pilots in another part of the state. Because these jobs require such specific skills and pay so well, you might find you have no room to negotiate your salary – it’s set in stone based on company policy.

To get a better handle on what barge pilots are earning where you want to work, contact the state’s pilots association and ask if they have currently salary data. You might also be able to search job sites by title and area to see what employers are offering. Many of these job sites, like Indeed and ZipRecruiter, provide average salaries of specific jobs advertised on their site, searchable by title and location.

• ZipRecruiter: What Is a River Pilot and How to Become One
• APA: Pilotage in the United States
• SalaryExpert: Barge Pilot
• The Advocate: River pilots seeking pay raise to nearly $700,000
• Marquette Transportation: Working on the River

Steve Milano is a journalist and business executive/consultant. He has helped dozens of for-profit companies and nonprofits with their marketing and operations. Steve has written more than 8,000 articles during his career, focusing on small business, careers, personal finance and health and fitness. Steve also turned his tennis hobby into a career, coaching, writing, running nonprofits and conducting workshops around the globe.

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River pilots vs. big industry: War over 6-figure pay is about to get more attention

BATON ROUGE -- The petrochemical industry has long battled with the river pilots who help steer ships up and down the Mississippi River, mostly over the large fees the pilots charge industrial firms for their services.

Most of the skirmishing has played out in obscure regulatory meetings, with occasional faceoffs in court. Now, for the first time in years, the battle will move to the Louisiana Legislature.

House Bill 650 pushed by the chemical and energy industries and sponsored by Rep. Thomas Pressly, R- Shreveport, would make sweeping changes to the regulatory boards and rules for pilots. It would add industry members to their oversight panel and require the notoriously nepotistic groups to make an annual report of pilots, including a list of how many are related to other pilots or public officials. The bill was scheduled for a committee hearing Monday.

The legislation comes after the Crescent River Pilots, which handles ships between Pilottown, at the mouth of the Mississippi River, and New Orleans, asked the regulator that handles rates for a significant pay raise. The request, which associations for oil and chemical industries are fighting at the Louisiana Pilotage Fee Commission, seeks to boost the pay for those pilots to an average of $697,000 a year. Crescent says the increase would put its pilots in line with the other two major pilot groups on the lower Mississippi River, adding that their pay is scaled to the amount of work done.

The river pilots have long been well-paid and politically connected, and they employ a host of powerful lobbyists. Longtime former state Sen. Francis Heitmeier has long represented the New Orleans Baton Rouge Steamship Pilots Association, or NOBRA, another of the major pilot organizations along the Mississippi. Its captains guide ships between New Orleans and the Capital City. Heitmeier's son, Cory, is one of six Heitmeiers who are NOBRA pilots.

The Crescent River Pilots sent an email blast to lawmakers on the House Commerce Committee, which is hearing the legislation, slamming Pressley's bill as a power grab by deep-pocketed corporate interests.

"Big Oil and Big Chemical once more risk public safety to gain control of pilot organizations as outlined in HB650," the email said in part. " Louisiana does not need companies responsible for Deepwater Horizon, Costa Concordia, Exxon Valdez, making decisions for public safety."

More: Capitol Briefing: Houma lawmaker wants New Orleans area -- not Louisiana taxpayers -- to pay for city's levees

The Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association, which is pushing the bill, responded with a "myth versus fact" sheet saying the legislation creates a "fair, transparent system" by adopting several practices used by the Lake Charles pilots. That group is often on good terms with industry groups, unlike the Mississippi River pilots.

Tyler Gray, head of the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association, said the measure would reform the pilotage system to make it more accountable to the public interest. He said the pilot groups that would be affected by the bill have a "lack of transparency."

"The Bar Pilots and Lake Charles Pilots have been able to safely conduct their business in a transparent and fair manner, and it is time for the state governing authorities of the other pilotage associations to modernize this antiquated system, including opening up their ranks to qualified candidates regardless of race, gender or family ties," Gray said.

All three of the Mississippi River pilot groups have a state mandate to guide boats along the tricky lower river, with the aim of keeping giant ships, many from other countries and carrying dangerous cargo, from crashing into one another, or into wharves or levees. The petrochemical and oil companies that use the river must pay for their services.

The gig pays very competitively. The pilots who traverse the stretch between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, colloquially known as NOBRA pilots, made $500,000 to $700,000 in 2020, regulatory filings show. Most of the Bar Pilots that year made over $500,000. In 2019, the last year of available data, Crescent pilots made an average of $526,958.

Pressly, HB650's sponsor, said he's met with pilot groups in recent weeks and is hoping negotiations turn into a compromise. He said he's hoping to add industry folks to the board overseeing the pilots so they're not "self-governed," and to make the qualifications for becoming a pilot widely known. Many of the pilots are closely related to other pilots, fueling complaints of nepotism.

"It just adds some transparency and sunshine to the process," Pressly said.

The bill would change the makeup of the boards overseeing the Crescent pilots and NOBRA pilots — the two groups most often at loggerheads with industry — by requiring one member to be appointed from a list of nominees selected by several business-based groups, including the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, LMOGA and the Louisiana Chemical Association. It would require the governor to appoint a businessperson selected from a list submitted by the Baton Rouge Area Chamber and Greater New Orleans Inc, as well as a licensed pilot nominated by the pilot groups.

While the bill's biggest impacts would be on the Crescent and NOBRA pilots, it would add regulations about training and transparency that would apply to all the river pilot groups, including the Bar pilots and the Lake Charles pilots.

Jack Anderson, president of the Crescent pilots' oversight board, said in a recent interview that the bill is "dangerous" and will "threaten the safety of the citizens of Louisiana and traffic on the river on a daily basis." He said industry groups are trying to kneecap the pilots because they asked for a pay raise.

"I don't understand how we're going to give it to the guys who did Deepwater Horizon and put them on the safety board," he said.

Anderson said Thursday he met with Pressly and hopes to reach an agreement with him on the bill.

E. Michael Bopp, president of the Crescent pilots, said the oil and chemical associations are just trying to gain leverage in the ongoing battle over pay for pilots. He said his group has a sterling safety record and that the bill would jeopardize it. The oversight board "doesn't belong to a group of corporate guys who are worried about profit," he said.

Asked about complaints of nepotism, he said pilots are no different than any other professionals. The Crescent group votes on which applicants to let into the association, and their ranks include many pilots from the same families.

"It's just like a law office or anything else," Bopp said. "It's not wrong for a son to follow in his father's footsteps. If you were a blacksmith a long time ago, there's a good chance the son is going to be a blacksmith."

Casey Clayton, whom Gov. John Bel Edwards recently appointed to the Board of Examiners that oversees the NOBRA pilots, echoed those comments, saying children often see their parents as role models. Clayton — whose father was the former president of NOBRA — also said the bill would jeopardize safety by "allowing industry to control state pilotage."

NOBRA's Board of Examiners was roiled by internal strife after Edwards nominated the son of former Senate President John Alario to the Board of Examiners for NOBRA, ousting Heitmeier's brother, Robert, in the process. Francis Heitmeier and Alario were longtime legislative allies.