Giddings was featured on the Oregon Coast Digest.
Giddings was featured on the Oregon Coast Digest.
Time Lapse of the F/V Patriot emerging from our shop.
Giddings Yard Triples in Size
CHARLESTON — By Coos County standards, Ray Cox has an enviable problem: He has too many jobs to fill.
On a Wednesday afternoon, an hour before quitting time at Cox’s two-story shop, another hopeful arrives. He’s a 20-something with short cropped hair and tattooed biceps.
Cox reluctantly turns him away. The young man lacked welding experience.
‘That’s the second one today,” Cox said.
‘It’s been hard to find talented people. As everyone knows, we don’t do anything in this country anymore. We don’t have any industry. So where do you get your people from? Your experienced people?”
In a nation that has spent the past 50 years outsourcing its manufacturing sector, Cox’s company, against the odds, is booming.
CHARLESTON, OREGON Sept. 12, 2015 — As soon as Giddings Boat Works employees finished their latest project, they had to cut it up in pieces.
That was the only way to get the 30-by-75-foot steel barge to Grand Coulee, Wash., where it’s going to haul fish and equipment up and down the Columbia for a Pacific Aquaculture steelhead farm.
The barge was cut up on Friday, and by Friday afternoon, Giddings Boat Works owner Ray Cox was watching his employees prepare the sections for shipping. On Sunday, the sections will take off for Grand Coulee aboard a procession of four trucks, he said.
Observing alongside Cox on Friday was local seafood entrepreneur Jerry Hampel in his capacity as manager of Pacific Aquaculture, a division of Pacific Seafood. Hampel collaborated on the design of the barge with Cox, Giddings’ general manager Mike Lee, and naval architect Bruce Culver. Cox’s company Tarheel Aluminum built the wheelhouse, and additional work was done by Skallerud Marine.
Hampel, who built his own first fishing boat when he was 20 and went on to found North Bend Oysters, is a former Port of Coos Bay commissioner… (read the full story at the link below)
http://theworldlink.com/news/local/business/aquaculture-barge-a-showpiece-for-giddings