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HOME > HISTORY INTRODUCTION > CHAPTER 1 > CHAPTER 2 > CHAPTER 3 > CHAPTER 4 > A NEW WAY > MARY BUTLER DAVIES
Chapter Four
The Fourth Generation: 1974-1998
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 Unlike his father, who came to the business reluctantly, Charles Duff Hughes threw himself immediately into Vane Brothers when he joined as a junior partner in 1980. Little did the Hughes' know at the time, that the combination and energy of these three generations working side by side would set a pace for rapid growth, diversification, and expansion that would continue for the next eighteen years.
In 1980, the one aspect of Vane Brothers with the most potential for growth was the marine fuel and transportation business. The three Vane motor tankers were continually busy pumping marine gas oil into a full spectrum of seagoing vessels, from the most grand of the ocean liners and largest of the freighters to the homeliest tugs, barges, and dredges. Vane Brothers had been a supplier of marine gas oil in the Port of Baltimore since the 1930s, but did not transport nor supply marine lubricants, launch service, black oil, nor potable water to the marine industry. Those services were provided by three other small family businesses in the port. Duff's early goal was to consolidate and operate all these services under one roof.
They encountered an early hurdle. For many years, an unspoken code in the Baltimore harbor encouraged each provider to stay in his own corner, leaving each to his particular service. While this segmented market kept some operators solvent, it was Duff's opinion that it left the entire local maritime service industry highly vulnerable. With that in mind, he began to diversify and consolidate the maritime service industry in the port.
 Duff established Vane Line Fuel in 1985 to expand fuel deliveries beyond the harbor and take that service to the streets of Baltimore. With a loan of $10,000, he bought his first 2,500-gallon tank wagon and won a contract with Maryland Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company to deliver over 250,000 gallons of diesel fuel a year to its yard. The division quickly grew to more than a million gallons of diesel fuel delivered every month. Vane Brothers was poised for further expansion.
In 1986 Vane Brothers seized upon the opportunity to acquire the Marine Launch Company, which controlled the local delivery service for marine lubricants. This new acquisition would add two vessels, the Willkate and the Carlyn, to Vane's fleet. Much of the credit for Marine Launch's success, in fact, must go to the three generations of the Tokarski family who worked there as captains, deckhands, forklift operators, and warehouse managers. In 1937 Walter Tokarski began working for his father as a deckhand at the age of fifteen. Walter's brother Bill, the captain of the Willkate, and Bill’s two sons, Curtis and Wayne, played an important role in Marine Launch's business. Today, the Tokarski family continues as the mainstay of Vane's lube oil business.
Quiche vs. cargo
In the mid-eighties, the Fell's Point district enjoyed a welcome revivification, much of it encouraged by the Hughes family. The revitalization, however, was so successful that the newly gentrified community had become an increasingly unlikely place for a growing marine service company.
Finally, in the "quiche vs. cargo" battle in Fell's Point, the quiche won. In 1987 Vane Brothers moved to lower Canton, the waterfront district named for its China trade two hundred years earlier. The company’s new home was Pier 11, site of the former headquarters of the United States Lines. The pier had been used as its passenger terminal (Baltimore Mail Lines) until 1939, and later as its cargo terminal until 1969. Now, in 1987, it would provide Vane with 3,600 feet of deep-water berthing and 160,000 square feet of warehouse space on thirteen acres. At the time, it seemed an unimaginably huge facility. Even by consolidating all the company's operations and employees—fourteen by that point—into one place, Vane did not need all the space it had let.
Enthusiastic partners
The move to Pier 11 commenced a period of unprecedented, almost dizzying growth for Vane Brothers. Charles Hughes Sr. had sometimes resisted his son's innovations; in Duff, Charles Jr. found an enthusiastic partner. Duff felt passionately about preserving the Vane franchise and saw his vision of the industry's consolidation as the best path toward achieving that goal.
To achieve his goals, Duff counted on four principal resources. First were his own significant energies and his proprietary sense of Vane’s long tradition of success. Next came his father’s encyclopaedic familiarity with the harbor and its maritime community (Charles Hughes Jr. is the spiritual descendant of Captain William Burke Vane in that regard). Third was the exhaustive technical expertise and engineering sophistication that Captain Russi Makujina brought to the company. Fourth would be the development of a team of experienced managers and crew that could rise to the demands of growth to come. By combining these four forces, Duff launched a campaign of expansion that continues today.
 In 1987 Vane bought its first 15,000-barrel double-hulled black oil bunker barge and chartered Sadowski Towing to move it. As Captain Russi and Duff had tankermen licenses, both committed themselves to spend the next year loading, pumping, and managing the bunker business. Hess Oil, Shell Oil, British Petroleum, and Chevron all supported Vane's decision, and utilized the newest addition to its fleet.
To complement its growth in barging, in 1990 the company christened a new tug, the Elizabeth Anne, named for Betsy Hughes. Piloted by Captain James Demske, the Elizabeth Anne would be used to transport the existing Vane barges, thus reducing the need for outside tug charters.
Vane's next wave of expansion came in response to a query by British Petroleum regarding problems it encountered with transport and bunkering out of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. There, Duff found the same decentralized conditions that had existed in the Port of Baltimore in the eighties were hindering BP's marine bunker business in Philadelphia. Once again, Duff saw the potential for diversification and consolidation. Philadelphia possessed great potential, because most major oil companies had long-established refineries, pipelines, and vast oil storage fields there. Vane Brothers positioned itself to compete with Maritrans and Compass Marine, the two main bunker and transport companies already doing business in the Port of Philadelphia. As it had in Baltimore, Maritrans slowly backed out of the bunker market. Compass Marine eventually went out of business, leaving Vane Brothers to develop and refine the bunker market in Philadelphia.
Additional barges and tugs joined the fleet, and more customers signed on with Vane. Hess Oil contracted with Vane to transport black oil from Philadelphia to Salisbury, Maryland, and Seaford, Delaware, on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay, and to Plymouth, North Carolina.
In 1992 Duff Hughes exported the same basic business model to Norfolk, Virginia, where he purchased two well-established marine transport companies. The first was the bunkering division of Allied Towing, a prominent marine transportation company. The second came in December 1997, when Vane purchased the Piney Point Transportation fleet, formerly owned by Steuart Transportation Company.
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