Engineer Profile: Vern Gore, East Side River Transportation
It’s a rare feat for a single individual to be associated with the same towboat for 28 years, yet that is how long Vern Gore has been the chief engineer of his boat.
Gore, of Mountain View, Mo., has a story like many others as to how he came to choose the river industry as a career. Within the immediate area in which he lived, there were limited job possibilities. Returning home from service in the U.S. Army, he could find work only in timber, at a sawmill or as a truck driver. Having tried the first two, he decided he wanted to do something different.
A good friend worked for Sioux City & New Orleans Barge Line, so Gore applied there for work, not knowing much about what a job on the rivers would entail. On August 10, 1972, he boarded his first towboat, the Yankton, under Capt. Wilbur Higginbotham. It was a 125- by 28-foot 1,800 hp. towboat powered with GM 12-567A diesels, built in 1962 by Parker Brothers in Houston. The Yankton was regularly on the Missouri River.
When the boat came out of the Missouri at the end of the season, it went in for drydocking and an overhaul. Gore volunteered to stay to help with the engine work, and his efforts in that endeavor led the port engineer to offer him an engineer position. In 1973, he became an engineer on the Atchison, a boat very similar to the Yankton but built by Marine Welding and Repair of Greenville, Miss., in 1963. Gore said it was a bit of culture shock at first because the Atchison was powered by smaller Cat D398 engines of 1,530 hp., making the engineroom space look much larger than that of the Yankton.
Over the next 14 years, Gore spent time on virtually every boat owned by SC&NO. In November 1985, he was serving as chief on the Nebraska City (See The Waterways Journal, May 26, 2025) while it was under charter to Steel City Marine Transport. Steel City made him a job offer, and being “ready for a change,” Gore soon found himself on the 3,800 hp. Magnolia, which Steel City soon renamed Dorothy June. He continued working for Steel City as the company grew and added boats to the fleet. In August 1987, Steel City began operating the boat that would figure so prominently in Gore’s life, but he wasn’t permanently assigned to it until 1997.
This boat is one of the true classic towboats still in operation on the Western Rivers. It was originally the Mark Eastin, built in 1957 by Nashville Bridge Company for River & Gulf Transfer Company and operated by West Kentucky Coal Company, both entities of Paducah, Ky. It has a hull that measures 177 feet by 42 feet, and with four decks surmounted by the distinctive Nabrico pilothouse, it was for many years considered the tallest towboat on the inland river system. It originally had a pair of GM 16-498 engines that were replaced in 1969 with GM 16-645E5 engines, still rated 5,600 hp. It was sold in 1965 to Midland Enterprises Inc. of Cincinnati, and in 1968 it was sold to M/G Transport Services, also of Cincinnati. As mentioned above, Steel City acquired it in 1987 and in 1988 renamed it Kevin Michael.
Since 1997, Gore has been the chief engineer on this boat, and when East Side River Transportation of Swansea, Ill., began operating the boat, he stayed with it. The Kevin Michael is sometimes chartered out to other companies, but always with Gore on board.
Asked what he felt had changed the most in the river industry over the years, Gore quickly commented that he felt it was a loss of the crew’s “pride in their boat” and attention to detail. When asked if he intended to retire any time soon, he said that he would continue to work as long as he was healthy and enjoyed it.
