Editorial: The Pittsburgh Barge Story Was Brief But It Said Much

Last week’s WJ carried a relatively short story under the headline, Huge Snowstorms Don’t Curtail Barge Shipments. It told how Pittsburgh continued to receive barge shipments of coal, heating oil, salt, et al, earlier this month—some 600 barges in all—while all other modes of transportation had been shut down by some three feet of snow. Brief as that story was, it was huge in what it said about transportation. There was much between the lines.

At one time or another, the same scenario has played out at different locations across the country. Millions of people depend on oil for heat, salt for their icy roads, and coal for electric power generation. (More than 50 percent of all electrical power in the United States is generated by coal, our most available energy source.)

Stop a driver and ask, “Where does the salt comes from that is spread on your icy streets? He may say, “Oh, the city has a big pile of it down by the river.” But the salt, in many cases, was barged in from the Gulf Coast. The same is true about fertilizers.

Some people think little about electrical power until they have a power outage. They are used to just flipping a switch and voila! The power is there.

So the barges kept running at Pittsburgh, the city kept spreading salt, the electricity remained on, and homes continued to be heated by oil.

This scenario isn’t new or surprising to Jim McCarville, executive director of the Port of Pittsburgh Commission. While the barges were doing their thing, “…the rest of southwestern Pennsylvania waited for the trash to be picked up and the mail to be delivered,” he said. Some 30 inches of snow fell in the area during the period February 5–10. During that time half of the 600 barges that delivered cargo were carrying coal.

While the Ohio River does ice up at times, tows are still able to muscle their way through. In past times on the Illinois River, the ice got so bad that towboat operators sometimes resorted to muletraining—pulling their barges behind the towboat and using the towknees to break ice. Over on the Mississippi, ice gets so bad at times that nothing moves and great ice packs form. One year a large ice gorge formed in the St. Louis area, and huge Canadian hovercraft were brought in to help break the ice and open up the river to traffic. Each spring there is a race to see which towing company can get a tow to St. Paul first.

It is difficult for those not familiar with barge transportation to realize how much precious cargo was carried in the barges that reached Pittsburgh. One barge can carry roughly 1,500 tons of coal, while large semi trucks manage only 26 tons. A single barge can move 453,600 gallons of precious heating oil, while individual semis can handle only 7,865 gallons—more than 57 times less. What that means is that if the coal came in by truck, provided it could even do so, it would take 57 semi trucks clogging the highways and tying up traffic during the storms.

We are not suggesting that without the barges the people of the area would have no heat or electricity. Power companies generally keep large supplies of coal on hand to help them through such predicaments. But the point is, the barges moved when other modes of transportation couldn’t. There were other commodities included on those 600 barges as well. Who knows the impact on companies if required cargo did not arrive on time.

Barge transportation plays a significant role in the economic well-being of our nation, yet trains and planes draw far more attention when it comes to politics and funding infrastructure. Every few minutes we hear planes pass overhead. If we are in the right location, we may hear or see trains, some moving more than 100 cars. If we sit along the riverbank we may or may not see a passing tow. Multimillions of dollars in cargo may pass silently in the night, going unnoticed by those in sleepy villages.

Trucks, trains and barges, players in our system of transportation, each have specific roles to play. Sometimes these roles overlap, and when they do, there is competition. When they don’t, trucks move cargo across the plains where there are no silver tracks. Trains can move more than a hundred 100-ton unit cars into areas out of the reach of barges and where truck transportation is too expensive. And then there are the cargoes that are so large and so heavy that they cannot be moved by any mode other than by barge unless they are disassembled. Entire power plants have been barged up the Mississippi and Illinois rivers.

A great advantage of the barge transportation is that it costs roughly half the rate of trains, which cost roughly half the rate of trucks. Transportation savings are great, and barges are environmentally friendly as well.

Pittsburgh, like many other towns along major rivers, benefit from reliable water transportation. That’s why we at the WJ and towing industry leaders everywhere consider it so important.

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