What to Look For When Hiring a Delivery Captain
There's no licensing board for delivery captains. The title isn't regulated. Here's how to sort the pros from the rest before you sign anything.
Hiring a delivery captain comes down to three documents. Credentials, an insurance rider, and a written contract. The pros carry all three. The rest don't, and you usually don't find out until something goes wrong.
There's no licensing board for delivery captains. The title itself isn't regulated, so anyone with a Facebook page and a boat in his profile picture can use it. Sorting the credentialed from the rest is the owner's job, and it has to happen before the deposit is paid. Here's the order I'd run that conversation in.
Start with the credential, not the experience
The thing that separates a professional delivery captain from a guy with a boat is a USCG Merchant Mariner Credential, which most people still call a captain's license. It's issued by the U.S. Coast Guard's National Maritime Center, and it comes with a few specifics that tell you most of what you need to know.
Three things to ask for, in writing:
Master rating with a tonnage. "Master 100 GRT" means he's qualified to operate vessels up to 100 gross register tons. "Master 50 GRT" is up to 50 tons. "Master 25 or 50 Inland" is a more limited credential. If the captain you're talking to doesn't know what a GRT is, you're not talking to a credentialed captain.
Waters rating. "Great Lakes and Inland Waters" is one credential. "Near Coastal" is another. "Oceans" is a third. The Great Lakes endorsement isn't optional out here. It's the one that covers the home waters, the connecting rivers, and the runs most owners actually do.
Commercial Assistance Towing endorsement, when relevant. Not every delivery needs it, but a captain who might encounter another vessel in trouble, or who might need to get his own delivery off a sandbar without summoning a third party, is one I'd want with the endorsement on his card.
Then ask for the Mariner Reference Number. That seven-digit number is the credential's VIN. A credentialed captain will give it to you the first time you ask. He's already used it on a dozen insurance riders this year, and handing it over is reflex.
Then verify it yourself. The Coast Guard publishes a Merchant Mariner Credential Verification tool. You enter the captain's last name and reference number, and a few minutes later you get a confirmation in your inbox showing his current credential, endorsements, and medical certificate status. It costs nothing and takes about two minutes.
If the captain hesitates on any of that, the conversation is over.
Then move to insurance
A credential gets a captain in the door. Insurance is what gets him on your boat.
Most carriers will require a policy rider, which is a one-page addition to your existing policy that names the professional captain and confirms he's covered under the vessel's coverage for the delivery. The rider is the carrier's way of saying we've reviewed his credentials and we're willing to keep the boat covered while he's operating it.
This is the part of the conversation where things usually sort themselves. Ask the captain:
Do you provide a Mariner Reference Number for the rider?
Have you been through this process with my carrier before?
Will you wait while my carrier confirms the rider before we start?
A pro will answer yes, yes, and "always" in three seconds. He's done it a hundred times. He has a one-pager ready to send to the underwriter with his credentials and reference number formatted the way the underwriter wants them.
If a captain deflects on insurance, that's not a captain you want on your boat. You'll hear the deflection as "don't worry about it, my own policy covers it," or "we'll figure that out later." Either is a no. I wrote a whole piece on why I won't deliver without an insurance rider and a procedural companion on what your carrier actually wants to see. The short version is that if anything goes sideways without a rider in place, you've got a coverage fight on top of whatever caused the problem.
Then the contract
Every delivery I run has a written agreement before the deposit is paid. Not because the work is adversarial; almost every delivery ends with a handshake at the destination. The agreement is there because it defines the work. What's the scope. What are the dates. What happens if a named storm parks itself off the coast for three days. What happens if the boat develops a fuel leak halfway through.
What you should expect to see in writing:
Scope: departure and destination ports, planned start date, daily rate, half-day rate, travel and layover rate.
Cancellation terms: a real one, with a notice period and a deposit policy. Twenty days' written notice or similar.
Mechanical responsibility: the captain is a mariner, not a marine mechanic. If something breaks, the daily rate runs while he manages the situation. That's normal, and it's reasonable.
Force majeure and safety halt: language covering named storms, government waterway closures, and the captain's right to halt the delivery for safety. The right to halt is non-negotiable. A captain who'd push out into a small-craft advisory because the schedule is tight is not one I'd want delivering my own boat.
Travel expenses: how airfare, fuel, dockage, and unforeseen expenses get handled, and who pays for what.
If the captain says he "doesn't really do contracts," that is an answer. It's just not the answer you want.
Then ask about experience
Years on the water is a vanity number. It tells you the captain hasn't drowned, which is a low bar.
Better questions to ask:
What waters do you actually work in? A Chesapeake Bay captain delivering a boat up the Hudson and across Lake Erie is a different animal than a Great Lakes captain doing the same route. Local knowledge is something you only earn by running it. Freighter traffic in the St. Clair River, the standing chop on Lake Erie in a west wind, the way the current sets across the Detroit River outbound from Lake St. Clair: those are not things you learn from a chart.
What vessels in the 30 to 65 foot range have you delivered recently? Tonnage rating tells you what he's allowed to operate. Recent hours on similar vessels tells you what he's actually good at.
Will you coach during the delivery if I want to ride along? Owner-assisted deliveries are a tell. A captain who's comfortable being watched and asked questions is a captain who knows what he's doing.
Can I talk to two prior owners? Yes is the answer. Anything else is the answer.
A short list of red flags
No written contract.
Won't give a Mariner Reference Number.
Cash-only, or pushes for the full payment up front.
Vague or dismissive on insurance.
Will talk about boat handling for an hour but won't talk about paperwork for five minutes.
Tells you which marinas to stop at but won't put any of the trip in writing.
None of these is a dealbreaker on its own. Sometimes a guy is just bad at email. Two or three of them showing up at once is a different story.
The first phone call tells you most of it
A pro runs the first call in a predictable order. He'll ask about the boat first: make, model, length, propulsion, year. Then the route. Then the dates. Then he'll volunteer his credentials, his reference number, his approach to insurance, and his standard contract terms before you have to ask. He's done this dozens of times. The order is automatic.
A captain you have to pull all of that out of, one question at a time, isn't necessarily a bad captain. But he's telling you something about how the rest of the relationship is going to go.
When somebody calls me about a delivery from Lake Erie to Lake Huron, or back from Florida to the Great Lakes in the spring, that's the order the conversation runs in. Credentials and reference number, insurance and rider, contract scope and cancellation. Then the boat and the route. If a delivery is on your mind for next season, a quick call sorts out most of it.
