BRUCE Seaton, the former chief executive officer of American President Lines (APL), and a pioneer of double stacked trains, has died in hospital in Greenbrae in the San Francisco Bay area. He was 90.
Mr Seaton was an executive at the oil and gas company Natomas in 1977 when he became the president and CEO of its shipping operations - American President Lines.
When Diamond Shamrock acquired Natomas in 1983, APL was spun off as a separate company. Mr Seaton retired from APL in 1990, seven years before it was sold to Singapore’s Neptune Orient Lines.
His stepson, Rick Barbaria, who also was an APL executive, said under Mr Seaton’s leadership the company pioneered double stack shipping and built the first larger-than-panamax containerships, reported American Shipper.
Those ships traded between Asia and the US west coast and "the idea simply was we got more turns on the vessel" by calling west coast and serving east coast and Gulf destinations with intermodal "stacktrains", explained Mr Barbaria.
Former president at competitor Sea-Land, Kenneth Johns, said Mr Seaton "came at an important time in the progression of the container business where, in particularly in the US. Intermodalism was starting to play a major role and he advanced that through APL."
According to Timothy Rhein, who also served as a CEO at APL in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the ocean carrier was "very tradition-laden and out of touch with modern transportation technology".
Mr Rhein recalls that Mr Seaton was "somewhat reluctant" to become a shipping executive. "He was an oil man and wanted to stay in oil, but he came over and started looking around and realised what we all knew - that APL was sleepy and sloppy compared to its competition.
"Mr Seaton said, 'we got to straighten this thing out and make something of it," and that is what he set about doing," said Mr Rhein.
Mr Seaton hired employees from competitors such as Sea-Land, Matson, and Seatrain and also recruited from the railways as APL expanded into the doublestack business, Mr Rhein explained.
While doublestack rail initially served international shippers, Mr Seaton also expanded the company into domestic intermodal business, acquiring 48-foot and 53-foot containers to supplement the standard 20- and 40-foot containers.
WORLD SHIPPING
07 January 2016 - 20:39
Former APL head, Bruce Seaton, dies at age 90
BRUCE Seaton, the former chief executive officer of American President Lines (APL), and a pioneer of double stacked trains, has died in hospital in Greenbrae in the San Francisco Bay area. He was 90.
WORLD SHIPPING
07 January 2016 - 20:39
Former APL head, Bruce Seaton, dies at age 90
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