Pittsburgh’s Just Ducky Tours Cancels its 2019 Season

The quack, quack, quack fun is over — Pittsburgh’s Just Ducky Tours, based in Station Square, has canceled its 2019 season. For 22 years, eight amphibious boats gave visitors a one-hour sightseeing tour of Pittsburgh. Michael Cohen – who started the business in 1997 with a friend – blames the loss on last summer’s accident involving a duck boat that occurred last year on Table Rock Lake in Missouri in which 17 people died. Despite warnings, the boat was caught in a thunderstorm that produced 60 mph hour winds and three-foot waves. The boat sank; the victims ranged in age from 1 to 70. The Table Rock Lake accident was the sixth involving a duck boat since 1999, including one in Philadelphia in 2010 in which two people died on the Delaware River. Cohen said he learned in January that their insurance company would not renew them, even thought they never had a fatality or a major accident. To stay in business, he said, Just Ducky Tours would have had to pay a 120 percent increase in its insurance premium. The company’s 50 employees were laid off in September. Cohen hopes to find someone local to buy the business.