Engineer Profile: Robert Yount, Southern Devall

For more than 30 years, deckhands, tankermen, pilots and captains have come and gone on the mv. Charles Southern, a 3,600 hp., twin-screw towboat owned by Sulphur, La.-based Southern Devall. A constant throughout those three decades, though, has been chief engineer Robert Yount.

“I’ll have about 31 years on that boat when I retire,” Yount said.

Yount’s career in the maritime industry started about 18 years prior to that. In 1977 and 1978, he spent his summer breaks aboard the towboat where his father was captain. In fact, both Yount’s father and his uncle were captains with Southern Towing, with the company naming a vessel after his uncle, Sam Yount.

“Then, in 1979, I came out full time as an anhydrous tankerman,” said Yount, who described anhydrous ammonia as liquid fertilizer. “That was Southern Towing’s bread and butter for years and years. Now, we’re Southern Devall, and we still push quite a bit of it.”

In around 1981, Yount left Southern to try his hand in the West Texas oil field. He did for about three and a half years before Bill Stegbauer, former president of Southern Towing Company, called and asked him to come back.

“The oil field had slowed down back then, so I said, ‘I reckon so,’” Yount said. “I loaded up, went back home and went back to the river as an anhydrous tankerman again for a little while.”

Yount said he later spent a couple of years working in the railroad business and the pipeline industry. He even worked for his brother-in-law who had an outboard marine shop.

“I thought, ‘Well, this ain’t paying enough,’ because I had a family to raise, so I went back to the river,” he said.

After a brief time as an anhydrous tankerman again, Yount became the chief engineer on the mv. Larry Tilly. He was there for five years before moving onto the mv. Charles Southern.

Yount said one thing that’s critical to being a vessel engineer is regular maintenance.

“I’m a firm believer in maintenance,” he said.

Bleeding fuel tanks; pumping up day tanks; visually inspecting everything; painting and cleaning; maintaining generators, air compressors and main engines; addressing plumbing and electrical issues—all falls on the shoulders of the engineer.

“It’s kind of like being a superintendent of an apartment complex,” Yount said. “The engineer has to take care of everybody. There are good days and bad days, you know.”

Yount said he sees a big difference between how he got his start and how companies bring on new mariners today.

“When I came out full time in ’79 after I graduated, they just stuck me on an anhydrous barge and said, ‘There, it’s yours,’” he said.

Today, there’s more of a focus on safety, training and mentorship. Yount himself plays a big part of training new engineers, with trainees working alongside him aboard the Charles Southern before moving on to other vessels.

“They’ll stick with me for a while,” he said, “and if we have problems, they’ll learn hands on.”

Like his uncle before him, Yount was honored with a Southern Devall towboat named after him about a year ago.

“A friend of mine that I work with sent me a picture [of the boat], and I said, ‘Man, that thing’s been PhotoShopped,’” Yount said. “I was on my way home, and when I got home, Kenny Devall called me and said, ‘I hope you don’t mind, but we named a boat after you.’ I said, ‘That’s what I heard, but I didn’t really believe it.’ He said, ‘I heard the rumor you thought it was PhotoShopped.’ That was a really big honor for me. I’ve been here a really long time, and that was a really nice award, to get a boat named after me.”

The mv. Robert Yount is a twin-screw, Z-drive, 3,800 hp. towboat built in 2008 at Steiner Shipyard in Bayou La Batre, Ala.

Yount said he’s been on duty on the mv. Charles Southern when it passed by the mv. Robert Yount, but he’s never actually worked on the boat that bears his name.

“It’s bad luck to ride a boat named after you,” he said.

With his retirement planned for late this year or early next year, Yount said he’s looking forward to spending more time with his wife, who he said “is going to be expecting a lot of fishing trips,” and their kids and grandchildren, one of which works for Southern Devall. He said he hopes to trip for the company on occasion in retirement.

“But it’ll be on my time,” he said with a laugh.