Do you think MTI/Nor-Tech/OL/Midnight etc will be able to move half as many boats as last year?

 

Not that I know of. Discovery Channel did a program on him a while back- one of those Investigative Reports things with Don Curtis - pretty much on the money, they re-run it every so often. There are a couple of mile-long threads about the whole thing over on offshoreonly. Very entertaining reading - even Kramer's ex-wife came on and made a couple posts- boy, that really lit things up. It was few years ago, tho.

Craig- I'm no expert, it's gonna be tough across the board. Maybe the high-end manufacturers with get by. I know the guys at Nor-Tech have a fairly healthy contract with Homeland Security for a bunch of 39 center consoles, and they were selling a lot of product to European markets last year, but I gotta believe everyone is tightening up right now. There's a lot of used equipment out there. I like to watch the listings over at National Liquidators, and have been amazed lately at some of the deals. I've heard the repo yards in south Florida have run completely out of room and the worst is yet to come.

crazy times.

 

is this the shift from the 1100+ boats on OSO classifieds at this time last year to only ~730?

 

Nah... go-fasts are a small percentage of total repos. The drop in oso classifieds is mostly guys realizing the boat isn't gonna move in this market unless they give it away, so many just let the ad run out and don't re-list, hoping for better climate down the road.

If what the financial prognosticators are saying is correct, it may be a loooong way down the road, if ever.

 

Yeah it's very slow right now, but not at a standstill, great time to get bargains, just more picky buyers, since there is tons of inventory. let me know if I can help any of you guys if your looking for something in specific.

 

Hahaha thanks. Anytime you need advice on this stuff let me know.

 

The thing with Ben Kramer and Aronow is that Aronow screwed Ben Kramer over. Aronow sold Cigarette to Kramer for a profit, and then later bought it back from him at a loss. After that he made it more profitable than before, and Ben Kramer was not happy about that, he felt like he had been screwed over. So he did what any self respecting drug runner would do. He had him shot. Right in front of Apache marine down the street from the cigarette factory. Also the fact that he sold boats to drug runners and better boats to Customs didn't help out.

 

My favorite part of the story comes after Kramer was locked up when he tried to have a helicopter land in prison to break him out that ended up crashing. You just can't make good stuff like this up.....

I don't know if I would say better boats to Customs. Those 39 Cats that Customs had were absolute pigs. They had the old 540 bulldogs in them and could just run 67 on a good day with all the customs crap in them. They were certainly durable but certainly not fast. We use to see two of them around Tampa Bay on a regular basis, even got to take a couple of rides but that was long ago now.

 

Growing up my friend Scott and his family had one of the first USA 39 Cats.
The name of the boat was "Losin' It" but his brother spelled it wrong for the grpahics guy and it pulled into the Jockey club Marina in Miami with the name "LOUSIN IT" - was hysterical

 

I'm looking for a 25' boat something like a Baja Outlaw or along those lines, it will be my first venture into boating so I don't want anything to crazy but if anyone knows of any good deals let me know. Thanks for the help.

Brent