From his first voyage at eleven years of age as a cabin boy on a sailing ship bound for China, Captain Bouchard knew that shipping would be his life. By 1915, he was the youngest tugboat captain in the Port of New York.

On July 30, 1916, while on watch of the tug C. GALLAGHER of the Goodwin, Gallagher Sand Co., Captain Bouchard witnessed the infamous Black Tom Explosion, which detonated $22 Million dollars worth of WW I munitions. Always one to set out to accomplish what few others could, he took his tug from the Long Dock at Erie Basin in Brooklyn and headed for New Jersey. Amongst continuing explosions, which blew the glass panes and lights out of his tug, he worked to rescue the 4,000-ton Brazilian steamer TIJOCA RIO, and the schooner GEORGE W. ELEZY, of Bath, ME. Later the US District Court awarded the Captain a salvage award and an additional award for personal bravery, which totaled $9,000. He quickly invested the salvage award to create his own company, Bouchard Transportation Company, which was incorporated in 1918.

The first cargo shipped for his new company was coal. In 1931, he acquired Bouchard's first oil barge, a sunken 15,000-barrel vessel, which he purchased for $100. After raising this vessel, he then towed it from Jacksonville, Florida to a Norfolk, Virginia shipyard, where it was converted into a hot oil system, oil barge that was named the JOHN FREDERICK. This 1931 acquisition was to be the first of many vessel purchases and construction projects at Bouchard.