Anyone who wants to know about Wayne Lamson quickly runs across the story about how he started with the ferry service as a ticket seller in Woods Hole, during the summers when he attended Bentley College. It’s the kind of story Hollywood publicists dream up to promote a star on the silver screen, or a corporate public relations department distributes to show their CEO in a positive light.
But Mr. Lamson, the longtime Steamship Authority general manager who announced this month his decision to retire, is the antithesis of a Hollywood star. And he doesn’t much fit the mold of corporate CEO. His experience starting on the ticket counter is not only real, but one where he learned important lessons that served him well over a 48-year career.
“I got to see first hand, on the front lines, what it was like,” Mr. Lamson said early this week, as he rode the Island Home from a meeting on Martha’s Vineyard back to his office in Woods Hole. “I can appreciate the employees who are dealing with customers every day. It can be a tough job.”
Those lessons learned at the bottom, he now applies from the top. Every complaint, compliment or suggestion that comes in from ferry passengers makes its way to his desk.
“I read all of those,” he said. “A lot of them are surprised that anybody ever calls back.”
A no-nonsense, plenty-of-common-sense management philosophy has kept him in the top job at the boat line for 12 years, 13 years by the time he steps down next June. That’s an eternity for an executive in a public service position who serves at the whim of a politically-appointed board. He has earned the kind of respect that prompts members of the SSA board to publicly plead with him to stay on the job a while longer. At SSA meeting on the Vineyard Tuesday, New Bedford governor Moira Tierney went so far as to abstain from a vote approving management goals for the coming year, because one of the goals was to begin the search for his replacement.
Mr. Lamson said he gave the decision to retire a lot of thought. It seemed like the right time to him.
“Not only personally, but from the authority’s standpoint,” he said. “With projects coming up, the completion of the M/V Woods Hole, and getting through the permitting process for the Woods Hole terminal. That was important,” he said.
When Mr. Lamson first took his seat behind the ticket counter at the Woods Hole terminal in 1969, every passenger ticket had to be validated by hand, auto reservations were written on paper forms kept in big tubs, and the agents put a sticker on the big grid schedule on the wall when a boat filled up.
The ferries were named Nobska, Islander, Naushon and Uncatena.
Now, more than half the auto reservations are made online, and the Steamship Authority expects soon to make passenger ticket transactions available from a mobile phone.
Now there are 10 boats in the fleet, enough to have a spare vessel.
After three summers selling tickets, and with a brand new accounting degree from Bentley College in hand, the Steamship Authority manager offered Mr. Lamson a job. He had another offer and another interview lined up, but he decided to take the job in his home town. He started as an auditor and moved up through the ranks of the financial department, until he was named treasurer in 1982. He held that position until 2004, when he was appointed general manager. During his 22 year span as treasurer, he handled the top job as interim general manager four times, for periods ranging from a few months to more than a year.
Among his most satisfying accomplishments, he counts automating the reservation process, construction of new vessels, purchase and refitting of used vessels and improving customer service. Most of those things are fairly unexciting, and that’s the way a general manager likes it. When things get exciting, it’s usually not a good thing.
He oversaw the end of the guaranteed standby line, and instituted a reservations-only system for vehicles.
“We had standby and guaranteed standby,” he recalled. “If you got in line by 2 in the afternoon, we’d guarantee to get you over by the end of the day. I’d come in to work at 8 in the morning and there would already be cars lined up below my window. When I went home at 5 or 6 at night, that car was still there in that same spot. Then we had to put on all these extra trips at night.”
Not everything that came through his office was routine. Mr. Lamson once figured out that he could sell the tax advantages of depreciation on the Eagle, at the time a new vessel for the Nantucket route. As a government agency, the SSA was not able to use depreciation advantages to reduce tax liabilities.
“The provision was going away at the end of 1987,” Mr. Lamson said. “But the vessel had to be placed into service by the end of the year in order to qualify. We ended up getting about $2 million out of the sale of these tax benefits. It was delivered in December, we didn’t have too much extra time. For the next 20 or 30 years, some company in Davenport, Iowa got to take this write-off.”
There was the time the SSA was considering accepting advertising from Bermuda tourism interests. He put the kibosh on the plan.
“I didn’t think that was appropriate, that we should have advertising all over the place about people going to Bermuda, going to some other Island. That was a no-brainer for me,” he said.
Then there was the time he had to sell a ferry almost nobody wanted. The Steamship Authority got into the high-speed ferry business in 2000, when it put the $8 million vessel Flying Cloud into service on the Nantucket route. Bedeviled by groundings and engine problems, it quickly earned a bad reputation.
In 2004, Mr. Lamson inherited the task of selling it. When a potential buyer from Boston took it out for a test cruise, it had been sitting out of service so long a filter clogged up and the engines had to be replaced.
Finally, Mr. Lamson connected with a ferry operator from Venezuela who called him Mr. Wayne.
“I almost thought it was somebody who was playing games with me,” Mr. Lamson said. As it turned out, the potential buyer needed a ferry with a large capacity for luggage, to take Venezuelans to a tiny offshore island where they could buy duty-free goods.
“It was going to be perfect for him,” Mr. Lamson said. He got the Venezuelan businessman to pay $3.9 million for the ill-fated Flying Cloud, complete with its new engines.
The Steamship Authority is a complicated enterprise, made more complex by the seasonal nature of the business, the sometimes extreme swings in fuel prices, and unpredictable equipment failures.
“We can lose $10 to $12 million by April, and then have to make that up in the summer months,” Mr. Lamson said. “November, December, you run in the red again, and hope you finish the year in the black.”
The complexity of the operation often generates complaints, he said. People tend not to understand financial hedging of fuel costs, or the effort required to satisfy U.S. Coast Guard safety requirements, but they sure know when the price of a passenger ticket goes up, or when a boat breaks down on a busy holiday weekend.
“The biggest thing that might be taken for granted is how dedicated and committed the employees are, the rank and file employees,” Mr. Lamson said. “Day in and day out, they’re there, 365 days a year. On holidays when people are with their families and most businesses are shut down, our vessels, our terminals, everything is open and running.”
Mr. Lamson is not an outwardly emotional man. He is an accountant, after all. But when he commissioned the new ferry Woods Hole earlier this year, there was a catch in his voice for just a moment, when he said, “I instruct the captains of the M/V Woods Hole, to set their watches, and bring the vessel to life.”
It was nearly imperceptible, but there was a tiny catch in his voice this week when he talked about the right time to retire, and recalled that moment at the commissioning ceremony.
“I had been down to the shipyard [in Morgan City, La.] three or four times to see it,” he said. “Seeing it all come together like that, when you start with a flat piece of steel, then you’re standing there and you see what the finished product looks like, it’s pretty amazing.”
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