Air boat in parking lot of old Fruit of the Loom building is unique

If you are from south Louisiana, chances are you have seen an airboat.
You haven’t seen anything like the one sitting in the parking lot of the old Fruit of the Loom building in Abbeville.
Marine Turbine Technologies, the Franklin-based company with an office in the old Fruit of the Loom building, has built what it calls the Turbine Powered Super Airboat.
The company built the boat at the Port of West St. Mary in Franklin and transported to Abbeville for exposure.
Using an exclusive 10-foot-diameter propeller system, the 15-foot-by-27-foot boat definitely earns its name.
“It has 5,000 pounds of thrust per side,” said Stuart Duncan of Marine Turbine Technologies. “That’s 10,000 pounds of thrust on a 27-foot boat.
“In the right conditions, the boat would do over 100 miles per hour.”
However, the company didn’t build the boat to simply go fast.
The Super Airboats are designed to haul heavy equipment such as cranes, drills, heavy fire fighting equipment, workover machinery, telephone poles and cradles for pipeline material.
It has an eight-ton payload.
“Companies like the power companies use conventional-style airboats with three or four gas engines to haul cranes,” Duncan said. “Those boats get into some areas where they need to run across marsh and swamp-land areas. There are certain sections where you have to run dry marsh or cross a levee.”
“Those big boats can’t run on dry land with nothing on the front deck.”
The Super Airboat can run on dry ground while hauling six tons. That ability allows for little impact to the environment.
“The marshes and coastal erosion are issues that companies are facing,” Duncan said. “When they have to use the marshbuggys, it costs them money to come back and restore the land. We can come in and haul the heavy loads, and a week later, you don’t know we were there. The grass starts coming back up. We don’t dig any ruts.
“It allows for work to get done with no impact on the marshlands.”