Marina Seca Stops Trucking Boats to U.S.

"We have sold our truck and have gone out of the business of trucking boats from Mexico back to the States," Kiki Grossman, Manager of Marina Seca, San Carlos, told us in a telephone interview yesterday.

Up until now, Marina Seca was the only real ‘truck your boat back from Mexico’ game in town. For an average of about $2,300, they would haul boats to 50 feet out, remove their mast, truck the boat and mast to Tucson, and transfer it to the truck and trailer of an American carrier. They’ve been shipping about 80 boats a year home to California, almost all of them in the spring.

So what went wrong? "Getting across the border became a real pain," explains Kiki. "U.S. Customs suddenly started to require much more of our driver, and was basically looking for ways to make it hard on us. For example, they started to demand proof that duty had been paid on foreign built boats, something they don’t do if boats are sailed back. In several cases, boatowners had to pay duty a second time. And with just one truck and one driver, and all the deliveries during three months a year, it no longer made business sense to offer that service. As a result, we sold our truck. We did keep the trailer, however, and there is a possibility we’ll be able to offer the service again using a third party trucking company. But for now, we are no longer trucking boats."