Abandoned Post factory

It's a terrible thing to see a once thriving factory that produced something that brought joy to so many of us falling apart.

I Googled Earthed the Miami River today. Found my old Bertram yard. Some boats still tied up but the old elevator yard out of use and it looked like another Miami River junk yard.
Not a ghost town like the ole Post yard but still depressing.

I was at the plant a couple of times to pick up parts. Tis a shame.

One like this

I'm actually impressed that these "suburban explorers" treated the property with the respect it deserves, despite obviously not having a clue about Post's history. "Hey dude... they built yotts here..." I'm not condoning the obvious trespass, but I didn't see them disturb anything. Previous 'visitors' clearly had. I'm glad they gave me a glimpse into a chunk of personal history.

I got a kick out of the sign at the time clock, warning people not to clock out early: "I will find the employee that is destroying these signs. He will be terminated." A bit of a look inside the Post culture.

Post just wasn't capitalized to withstand the crippling blow of the Cook Composites gelcoat disaster. Viking survived and prospered, although they too teetered on the edge of meltdown. Nonetheless, sad to see an icon of the family boat building tradition relegated to this. The YouTube generation has no understanding of the pride, honesty, craftsmanship, tradition... of what went into manufacturing a leading product of it's time. ""Yachts of Quality, Not Quantity Since 1957".

The luxury tax just about wiped out boat building in New Jersey. Pretty much only two survived, Viking and Ocean. And it was quite the trickle down with all the ancillary businesses.

Post survived the luxury tax. Silverton did too, I believe.

The luxury tax did kill the marine industry, but that was way back in the Bush The First administration... early 1990's. Post went out in 2011

OK, in New Jersey the luxury tax hit hard. I would guess having multiple big boat companies building in Jersey didn't help each other. All the big boat companies suffered, even Viking almost went under. Viking shut down the Florida facility and went from approximately 700 employees to just over 60 at the NJ plant. A move that obviously kept them afloat.
Post survived but left Jersey. Trickle down effect didn't help either. The company that did a lot of the stainless work for Egg, Post, Ocean etc was a local to outfit (to me) that disappeared during the decline.

At least in New Jersey our Twinkie eating governor has reduced some of the sales tax on boats.

He'll make it up on fuel taxes !!

That depends on your definition of survive. They have built no boats since the move.

Hi Bob, They survived the luxury tax but not the gel coat fiasco, to put a finer point on it.
As of now they seem to survive in name only.

Manufacturing has taken a beating in the last 8 years due to increasing regulations and labor costs. EPA, OSHA, union powers, Obamacare all have added up to a death by a thousand paper cuts for thousands of businesses. Plus increased energy costs due to this insane policy of not using what we have


Remember that 3 or 4 years ago diesel was over $4 a gallon

Companies always blame things "beyond their control." Feeling that factors they can't control are destroying them is how they often end up dying. The reality is that Viking faced the same issues as Post. Viking did more things right than wrong. Post did more things wrong.

Viking was also a much bigger company with bigger bank accounts.

There you go.

Ocean yacht now gone too. Viking bought the Ocean Yacht Factory a couple for years ago. The Dr bought all of the Ocean yacht molds but i doubt he will build any

Viking has the former Ocean 37 Billfish in production now. Egg Harbor Group (Egg, Silverton, Topaz, Predator, Buddy Davis) now owns the Ocean brand an the rest of the Ocean molds

http://www.****************/modelsNew/37B/37B_indexPageImage.jpg

One big factor in the slow demise of Post was the gel coat issue that also affected Viking. Post built 81 boats using the "problem" gel coat. Many of these boats had to be repaired under warranty and with the lawsuit against the gel coat manufacture, repairing boats, lawsuits against Post from boat owners and slow sales, money quickly dried up and were forced to close shop.

One of the major factors of Post's demise was the gelcoat problem it had between 1998 and 2002 (I think those are the years) They had to strip and redo at least 36 boats at a cost of hundreds of thousand because of a faulty formula. Viking had the same problem but they had a bigger market share. Those were not particularly strong sales years - so I suspect the 2 combined to help turn the company upside down. I believe the last boat it made was in 2006?

Only the "assets" went to Maryland in the form of molds and the name