All-City Towing Owner Buys Deep Thought

Jeff Piller (center) and Sup. Sheldon Wasserman (right). Photo taken Aug. 5, 2025 by Graham Kilmer

Going once, going twice, sold.

Deep Thought, aka the S.S. Minnow, the boat that has captured an inordinate amount of attention for nearly the past year, has been sold. The boat was auctioned by Milwaukee County Parks, who paid to remove the boat from the Milwaukee shoreline in May.

Jeff Piller of All-City Towing was the highest bidder for Deep Thought. It was his company that yanked the boat from its resting place between McKinley and Bradford Beaches, where it had sat since running aground in October 2024. It’s also his lot where the boat now sits.

“Have you ever had something, where you’re cleaning out your house and you just can’t throw it away, you can’t let it go,” Piller said. “My staff and I, and everyone involved, has really grown to love it, and we want to keep doing good stuff with it.”

Piller suggested he will try to sell off pieces of the boat himself, and that he may invite graffiti artists to tag up the starboard side of the vessel. The port side, which faced the shore, was heavily covered with graffiti.

Piller said he isn’t interested in making any money from the boat and would like to work with charities to auction off pieces of the boat.

“We plan on trying to do some good things with it,” he said.

The boat was previously, and briefly, owned by Richard and Sherry Wells of Mississippi. The couple ran out of gas and ran their boat aground looking for the opening to McKinley Marina. There the boat sat for months, through the winter, filling with sand and water.

In May, All-City Towing removed the boat, which had become a popular lakefront attraction for Milwaukeeans. Hundreds showed up to watch the boat hauled out of the sand by three heavy duty towing trucks.

On July 22, an online auction went live. In the first 24 hours, bids shot up to $1,100. A day later, the highest bid was $1,125. And there the bidding sat for roughly two weeks. “The bidding isn’t going as well as planned,” Sup. Sheldon Wasserman wrote in newsletter to his constituents on Aug. 1. Wasserman’s district includes the shoreline where the boat was grounded last year.

In the final 24 hours, the bidding resumed and going into the final hours the highest offer was $2,000. Wasserman decided to host an official “live countdown and broadcast” in the final hours of the auction.

“The price is right,” Wasserman said after the boat sold, though he added, “I wish we had a higher amount for a bid.”

Wasserman did suggest that, despite the underwhelming sale price, the county did manage to save some money by selling the boat. Otherwise, it would have had to pay to dispose of it. He and parks staff are glad to be done with the boat, he said.

“We really want the best for Deep Thought,” Wasserman added.

Before the boat went to auction, supervisors and county officials went back and forth over how the county could get its money back — the $50,000 paid to All-City Towing. There was discussion of suing the Wells. But the county’s attorneys felt this would potentially cost more than the county could even collect in damages.

Piller has closely watched the bidding, and in recent days he gave out a lot of quotes for moving the boat to potential bidders, he said. Luckily, for him, the bidding never went so high as to price him out. There remains a lot of sand and debris in the boat that need to be removed before it can be cut into pieces for charitable auctions.

“It’s gonna be very labor intensive and a lot of time to be able to make this into good charitable pieces,” he said.