Choosing the Right Tugboats for Your Business

A tugboat business can be a highly profitable venture. Tugboats are very important in the maritime industry and are necessary to the operation of other vessels, such as large ships and barges. Tugs supply the added power and maneuverability other vessels need, especially through difficult and narrow waterways, or during malfunctions and operational problems.

In starting a tugboat business, one of the things you need to do is to find the right tugs; there are several kinds of tugboats to serve different functions. You have to determine the type of tugboat operation that you want, then build your tugboat fleet accordingly. The construction and the power of the tugs needed for river operations are very different from those needed for the ocean. Likewise, harbor tugs, or those used to tow ships around harbors, have features designed specifically for maneuvering in crowded ports.

The recent thrust in environment-friendly tugs gives you additional options on tugboat engine designs. In addition to tugs run by traditional diesel engines, you may also consider those which run through hybrid engines. A hybrid-engine tug is powered by a battery that is charged by the tug’s diesel engine. Once the battery is fully charged, the diesel engine automatically shuts off, thus decreasing the tug’s consumption of diesel. Furthermore, new tugboats being built for sale in the future are designed to run on more environmentally-friendly fuel such as liquefied natural gas or LNG.