MobileOps CEO Sees Common Need Across Inland Markets

By any measure, the Columbia and Snake river system is a very different operating environment from the Mississippi, Ohio and Gulf Intracoastal Waterway. Cargo mixes differ. Tow configurations differ. Infrastructure profiles differ. Water conditions differ. But according to Dave Hill, CEO of MobileOps, one thing remains constant across all of them: operators need reliable fleet, maintenance and operational software that reflects the realities of their market.

Hill, whose maritime career has included ship agency, logistics, West Coast tug operations and executive leadership in the Gulf, said MobileOps was founded to address a growing operational burden facing vessel operators. The company launched in 2016 as Subchapter M compliance requirements were coming into effect, and it has since expanded from maintenance and safety functions into a broader operational platform that includes dispatch and invoicing.

“We saw a need,” Hill said. “Subchapter M was coming. The burden [was] the paperwork to meet regulatory requirements and to be able to quickly respond to audit requests and provide evidence of what we were doing.”

Today, MobileOps, based in Bellevue, Wash., serves customers across harbor towing, coastal towing, inland towing and even deep-sea trades. That broad customer base gives Hill a wide-angle view of how marine transportation differs from one region to another — and where software must be flexible enough to keep pace.

A clear contrast, Hill said, can be seen between the Columbia-Snake system and the inland waterways centered on the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. On the Columbia-Snake, agricultural cargoes, especially wheat, play a dominant role. By comparison, the Mississippi and Ohio systems handle a broader industrial mix, with coal remaining a major commodity along with fertilizer and agricultural products. But Hill said cargo itself is not the main issue when it comes to software design.

“The cargoes don’t matter so much,” he said. “Really [it’s] about the operations and maintenance of those operations to sustain operations, and that’s where our system supports those carriers.”

What matters more are the operating patterns behind those cargoes.

In the Mississippi and Ohio river network, operators may push 30 or 40 barges at a time, with tow configurations constantly changing. Barges are dropped in fleeting areas, picked up again, reassembled, shifted for lock dimensions and routed through a network defined by fluidity. The work is dynamic, fragmented and often highly dependent on tributary conditions and lock limitations. By contrast, Hill described the Columbia as more of a point-to-point market, where operators are less likely to encounter the same scale of fleeting activity or continual tow reshuffling. There, a tow may consist of only one to five barges, and once assembled, it is more likely to lock through intact.

That distinction has major implications for software implementation. A dispatching, maintenance and compliance platform must be able to handle both long-haul, multi-day towing jobs and short-cycle vessel movements measured in minutes. Fleeting tugs, harbor assist boats and terminal shuttles create a different rhythm of operations than a line-haul tow moving across a river system. For Hill, that is where adaptability becomes essential.

“Our system really has to flex to those different needs,” he said. “Flexibility is key.”

Hill also pointed to differences in contract structures. Some markets lean more heavily on spot work, while others rely more on longer-term charter arrangements. That changes how orders are dispatched, how trips are conducted and how operators track assets, crews and maintenance cycles. The software challenge is not simply digitizing paperwork, he suggested, but building tools that fit the commercial and operational DNA of each market.

The infrastructure story also differs sharply across regions.

Hill noted that while both the Columbia-Snake and the inland river system depend on locks and dams, the age profile of those assets is very different. The Columbia-Snake system, which he described as a 465-mile marine highway with eight federal locks and dams, is built on infrastructure dating largely to the 1970s. By contrast, many lock and dam structures on the Mississippi trace back to the 1930s through the 1950s. As a result, unplanned outages and maintenance challenges are more pronounced in the older inland system.

That does not mean the Pacific Northwest is free of infrastructure concerns. Hill said locks and dams in both systems require attention and repair, and long-term planning remains essential, but the nature of those concerns is different. In the Columbia-Snake, annual closures are more predictable. Hill said the industry and the Corps of Engineers are clearly thinking beyond short-term repairs and asking what these systems will need over the next several decades.

Water conditions also set the two systems apart. Hill said the Columbia-Snake does not typically experience the same degree of disruptive water-level variability seen in the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, where operators have had to adapt in recent years to both high- and low-water extremes. He pointed to coordinated water management involving British Columbia and BC Hydro as one reason navigable conditions in the Northwest have remained comparatively stable. Still, he acknowledged that future conditions could change, particularly with unusual snowpack years and evolving hydrology.

Dredging presents another contrast. While dredging is a constant and highly visible requirement in the Mississippi and Ohio system, Hill said the Columbia does not experience that need to the same extent. Hydrology, traffic density, prop wash and water-level changes all affect sediment movement, but the overall maintenance dredging burden differs.

Looking ahead, Hill believes the next major opportunity for marine operators lies in turning operational software into a stronger data foundation — not only for compliance and maintenance, but also for predictive decision-making and artificial intelligence applications.

“AI is definitely changing,” Hill said. “But the key word there is ‘data.’”

Hill framed it in terms familiar to river operators: “Good data upstream, data first, provides good data downstream.”

In other words, AI is only as useful as the information feeding it. A fleet management platform that captures maintenance, safety and operational data accurately and efficiently can help companies move toward more preventive and predictive models. Hill cautioned that the human element still matters, though. Data collection must not create unnecessary burdens for mariners, and AI-generated outputs must still be verified.

“Trust it, but verify it,” he said. “Don’t assume that AI produces the absolute correct answer or accurate data.”

For Hill, that is the larger lesson across every inland and coastal market MobileOps serves. Whether a company is managing a one-to-five-barge tow on the Columbia, a 30-barge configuration on the Mississippi or short-cycle harbor work on the Gulf Coast, the need is the same: systems that reduce friction, improve visibility and help operators stay ahead of maintenance, compliance and commercial demands.