Under Seaton’s leadership, ocean carrier APL pioneered industry innovations like larger-than-panamax containerships, doublestack trains, and domestic intermodal service.
Bruce Seaton, the former chief executive officer of American President Lines and a pioneer in the world of containerization and intermodalism, died Dec. 26 at the age 90 at Marin General Hospital in Greenbrae, Calif.
Seaton was an executive at the oil and gas company Natomas in 1977, when he became the president and chief operating officer its shipping operations – American President Lines.
He is survived by his wife Joyce and three stepsons Rick, Fred and Greg Barbaria.
When Diamond Shamrock acquired Natomas in 1983, APL was spun off as a separate, public company whose shares were traded on the New York Stock Exchange. He retired from the company in 1990, seven years before it was sold to Singapore’s Neptune Orient Lines.
Rick Barbaria, who also was an APL executive, said under Seaton’s leadership the company pioneered double stack shipping and built the first larger-than-Panamax containerships.
Those ships traded between Asia and the U.S. West Coast and “the idea simply was we got more turns on the vessel” by calling West Coast and serving East Coast and Gulf destinations with intermodal “stacktrains,” he explained.
Seaton, who had trained as an accountant, also had the company invest heavily in information technology.
R. Kenneth Johns, a former president at competitor Sea-Land, said Seaton “came at an important time in the progression of the container business where, in this country particularly, intermodalism was starting to play a major role and he advanced that through APL and was a key player at an important time.”
“He wasn’t one of those guys who grew up in the industry and saw everything three times before he realized it,” said Johns. “He came in and got right in the front and did a lot of good things.”
After his retirement, Seaton continued to be actively involved with several charities, chairing the Bay Area United Way, serving on the board of visitors at University of California, Los Angeles, his alma mater, and the board of Marin General Hospital.
Timothy Rhein, whose 35 year career at APL overlapped that of Seaton and also served as CEO, noted APL can trace its origins to 1848.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s APL was “sleepy, very tradition-laden and out of touch with modern transportation technology,” according to Rhein.
Rhein said there were a “lot of old folks, sea captains running things. They really were not businessmen, or good planners or executives. Nice fellas, all of them, everyone was nice at APL, but they never made much money and they never got much done.”
The company’s fleet had begun to convert to containerships in the late 1960s, in part, in reaction to the growth of other companies, including Sea-Land.
Rhein recalls that Seaton was “somewhat reluctant” to become a shipping executive. “He was an oil man and wanted to stay in oil, but he came over and started looking around and realized what we all knew – that APL was very sleepy and very sloppy compared to a lot of its competition.”
Seaton said, “‘we got to straighten this thing out and make something of it,’ and that is what he set about doing,” recalled Rhein.
Seaton met with other executives in the industry and hired employees from competitors such as Sea-Land, Matson, and Seatrain, said Rhein, as well as promoting some employees from within. Seaton also recruited from the railroads as APL expanded into the doublestack business.
While doublestack rail initially served international shippers, Seaton also expanded the company into domestic intermodal business, acquiring 48-foot and 53-foot containers to supplement the standard 20 and 40-foot containers that dominate ocean shipping.
“We ran the stack trains both ways,” said Rhein.
Seaton was remembered by contemporaries as thoughtful, reserved, and quiet, even shy.
“You never saw him with his hair down, but he was bright, worked hard and was very proud of the people he hired and paid them well,” said Rhein. “He was very generous and very concerned about people, yet when the people he cherished so much turned out not to be doing the job, he wasn’t hesitant to get rid of them.”
Bruce Seaton, former APL executive, dies at age 90
