When a ship arrives on the East Coast of the United States at one of 17 ports from Boston to Corpus Christi, chances are that Bob Bandos knows about it. As president of the Philadelphia-based ship agency Rice, Unruh, Reynolds Co., Bandos handles the comings and goings of 2,500 ships every year. It’s a job he shares with his company’s 60 employees, that arrange for everything from the tugboats that guide vessels into port to dental appointments for crew members.

“We handle all of the logistics associated with getting a ship into port, expediting operations while it is in port and sailing it out to the next destination,” Bandos says. “In today’s market, some of these ships are earning $150,000 a day. If they are delayed for even one day, the lost revenue is significant. Our job is to keep the ship moving. It’s a very tight schedule.”

For each ship under its management, Bandos’ company sets the arrival time based on tidal currents, obtains the necessary permission to come into port and arranges for the pilots, tugboats and line handlers. During the 24 hours that a ship is in port, the agents work closely with the Coast Guard and deal with officials at the Customs Border Patrol, which now combines the functions of customs, agriculture and immigration as part of increased homeland security measures. They get the ship stored with provisions and spare parts, arrange any repairs that are needed and deal with the medical or dental needs of the seamen on board. If crew members are being repatriated to their homeland, they even arrange for flights home and transportation to the airport.

While serving as agent for all kinds of ships carrying every imaginable commodity as well as passengers, the Rice, Unruh, Reynolds Co. is predominantly a tanker agent handling ships that carry chemicals, oil and gasoline products. As global hub agent for British Petroleum, they handle every single British Petroleum ship coming into the United States and South America from anywhere in the world. This includes VLCCs (Very Large Crude Carriers), which are 1,250 feet long, 270 feet wide and carry 2 million barrels of oil.

Rice, Unruh, Reynolds is also one of the few ship agencies that operates the highly sophisticated Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) ships. “We are operating LNG ships on behalf of British Gas out of London, handling voyage orders, what to load, where to load, arranging for ship agents around the globe and monitoring the ships’ performance on a daily basis,” Bandos says.

During the past four years, homeland security has played a critical role in the ship agent’s work. Bandos assists Philadelphia’s Homeland Security Anti-Terrorist Task Force, which has developed a pilot security program that could be adopted nationwide. “We’ve been working to mitigate exposure to terrorist attack. It’s a cooperative effort throughout the whole port, involving various refinery owners and ship owners working toward the same goal,” he says.

While much of the anti-terrorist activity is confidential, Bandos describes one proposed security measure that will require ship captains to photograph all crew members arriving in port, even if they have passports (which could be forged). The photos will then be provided to U.S. Immigration, the FBI and Army and Navy intelligence for screening. The ship agent also plays a critical role in homeland security by providing information about the ships they represent and working with their clients overseas to gain support for security measures in the U.S.

For Bandos, the work of a ship agent requires a great deal of international travel, as he meets with ship owners in places like London, Oslo, Hamburg and Nigeria. “I visit existing customers, identify problems they’re having that we might be able to assist them with and work at developing a new customer base,” he says.

“I enjoy making friends all over the world,” Bandos says. “Relationships are everything in the shipping industry. Shipping is global, but it’s a small community.”

—Sharon Huss Roat, AS ’87

Bob Bandos lives in Sewell, N.J., with his wife, Catherine. Son Timothy graduated from UD this year with a bachelor’s degree in finance, and son Robert is a junior studying finance in the Lerner College of Business and Economics.