On May 16, 1919 she left Los Angeles loaded full for the Orient with a general cargo consisting among other things of steel rails, automobile supplies, roofing paper, and old newspapers.
Among other cargo she brought back, there were approximately 8,000 tonnes of graphite ore, representing by far the largest amount shipped to the Pacific US thus far.
[10] West Cajoot departed on her next voyage on November 24, 1919 sailing from San Francisco with a variety of cargo including 1,275 bales of cotton bound for Japan.
[21] She left Philadelphia on May 5 after loading 2,712 tonnes of bituminous coal, arrived in New York City on May 7,[22] and from there proceeded to St. Nazaire and reached it on June 23, 1920.
[24] At the end of July she sailed for Norfolk where she arrived on August 2 and was hired to transport coal for the US Naval base of Pearl Harbor.
She left San Francisco on December 15, 1920 arrived in Manila on January 14, 1921, and unloaded all the equipment in the mouth of Pagsanghan River a few days after.
[33] In October 1923 West Cajoot was put for maintenance at Crawley Shipyards of Oakland in preparation of her return to active service.
After the maintenance was finished, she was allocated to Struthers & Barry to serve on their Pacific route from Los Angeles and San Francisco to Yokohama, Kobe, Shanghai, Manila, Hong Kong and Singapore as part of their American Far East Line.
She dropped the anchor on May 16, bringing among other things, 449 tonnes of wild animal collection of noted hunter Frank Buck.
The animals came from India and were loaded on board in Singapore and included cobra collection destined for New York City Zoo, snakes, elephants, leopards, tigers etc.
[52] West Cajoot continued on her trip touching off at several Chinese ports such as Dairen and Qingdao before a stop in Shanghai on December 15.
[54] She then stopped off at various small ports around the Philippines before departing for San Francisco where she arrived on February 13, 1926 bringing back coconut meal, copra and by-products.
She was immediately put into dry-dock to undergo installation of deep tanks to allow transportation of vegetable and coconut oil from the Philippines.
The work was finished in mid-March and on March 19 West Cajoot sailed from Los Angeles with a cargo of case oil and took course to the Orient.
[56] After stopping off in San Francisco on March 20, and taking on more case oil, West Cajoot sailed next day to Shanghai.
After stopping off at a variety of small ports West Cajoot departed from Manila on June 8, arriving in San Francisco on July 8, 1926.
After stopping off at Port Moresby on August 21 to load 525 tons of copra, the ship proceeded to Hong Kong, Manila and the Philippines.
West Cajoot left Manila on September 23, 1927 with 1,223,583 pounds of coconut oil destined for a soap company in Los Angeles.
In October 1927, the Los Angeles Times reported on the impending sale of West Cajoot and 18 other Swayne & Holt ships to a San Francisco financier.
Leaving Tacoma on May 9, the ship made stopovers in Portland, San Francisco and Los Angeles to load general cargo and case oil before heading for Melbourne where she arrived on June 20.
The vessel continued travelling between Pacific Coast of the US, carrying mostly timber, oil, and general cargo to Australia, and occasionally New Zealand through 1937.
As the new contract was not granted to O&ON, the service was suspended indefinitely due to economic hardship to operate the route without a substantial subsidy from the government.
[70] After reaching Auckland on April 12, Golden Bear proceeded to Australia where the ship stopped at several ports before loading 406 tons of coal at Newcastle and sailing for Rabaul on May 14.