SHIPPING: Ends Against the Middle

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If a ship has neither a bow nor a stern, it is certainly not a ship. But it is a nifty little method of getting the benefits of U.S.-built ships without the high cost. On order last week from the Hamburg yards of German Shipbuilder Willy Schlieker (TIME, Oct. 26) were the midsections of six vessels for Mobile's McLean Industries, Inc. With a booming business carrying highway trailer vans by sea, McLean decided to add six new vessels, each with a capacity of 476 vans, to his fleet of trailer ships. The problem was that if the vessels were built abroad they could not ship between domestic ports.

(U.S. coastal trade is limited to U.S.-built ships.) But if they were built at home, the cost would run between $10 million and $12 million per vessel.

McLean's solution is to play both ends against the middle. Schlieker will build only the midsections, which can then be towed across the Atlantic and enter the U.S. as "fabricated steel.'' McLean turns them into ships by simply buying old T-2 war-surplus tankers, hiring U.S. yards to graft the bows and sterns onto his German midsections, thus qualifying as "built in America." Total cost: less than $5,000,000 a vessel, a saving of 50% to 65%. So simple is the idea that other U.S. firms (e.g., American Ship Building) have ordered the midsections for several big ore carriers from Schlieker.