"The Mississippi River"-The Shipping Route
Wednesday, November 19, 2008SUSIE GHARIB: From its headwaters in northern Minnesota to its mouth in New Orleans, the Mississippi River remains the nation's pre-eminent inland waterway. This year about 300 million tons of grain, chemicals, coal and a variety of other commodities will travel up and down the river. In part two of our series "the Mississippi," Diane Eastabrook tells how the river has remained a popular shipping route despite challenges from other modes of transportation and Mother Nature.
DIANE EASTABROOK, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: It's mid morning in Buffalo, Iowa and the crew of the tow boat Phyllis is headed south on the Mississippi River. Captain Ross Marcks is in the pilot house.
ROSS MARCKS, TOW BOAT CAPTAIN: We're coming from St. Paul and eventually the barges will end up in the Gulf.
EASTABROOK: It's harvest time and the Phyllis is towing 15 barges loaded with 22,000 tons of grain for export. But her cargo can vary from one trip to the next.
MARCKS: We haul quite a bit of scrap iron. We have a lot of fertilizer that comes north and believe it or not, we've got a lot of cement that gets loaded and dumped north.
EASTABROOK: Barges and the Mississippi River are woven into the fabric of American commerce. Farmers began moving grain on the river with log rafts 200 years ago. Steamboats replaced rafts and barges replaced steamboats. Mark Knoy grew up on the river. His father was a tow boat captain and he is president of AEP River Operations, one of the largest barge companies on the Mississippi. Knoy thinks barge traffic on the river is a good barometer of the global economy.
MARK KNOY, PRESIDENT, AEP RIVER OPERATIONS: We have to have a strong domestic economy and we have to have demand worldwide for our grain and for our manufactured products. So, we need a robust economy both domestically and internationally.
EASTABROOK: Barges are among the cheapest modes of transportation. A single barge can travel twice as far on a gallon of fuel as a train and five times as far as a semi truck. But despite that cost advantage, shipping volumes on the Mississippi River has been relatively flat for the past 20 years. Speed is part of the reason. Barges are slow. And on the upper Mississippi they must navigate through an old lock system that can add hours to a trip. Transportation expert Donald Sweeney says changes in export patterns and competition from other kinds of carriers have also derailed the barge industry.
DONALD SWEENEY, ASSOC. DIR., CENTER FOR TRANSPORTATION STUDIES: There is direct rail shipment to the west coast and then putting the agricultural products on a freighter and then hauling it to the far east that way, which is cost competitive with using this river system.
EASTABROOK: Then, there is the river itself. The Mississippi River is notoriously unreliable. In the winter, ice on the upper part of the river can close the river to barge traffic for months at a time. Then during the spring and summer, water levels can fluctuate so dramatically that shipping can come to a virtual standstill. Earlier this autumn, a freak flood halted shipping on parts of the upper Mississippi for several days. That put the brakes on activity at the tri city regional port district in Granite City, Illinois. Are you concerned that this stuff is sitting here today waiting to get out?
SHARON OWEN, GENERAL MANAGER, UNITED STATES STEEL CORPORATION: No, this is in the hot band form.
EASTABROOK: Sharon Owen runs U.S. Steel's Granite City works, which ships rolled steel out of the port. She admits snafus like this are an inconvenience for customers. But Owen says the Mississippi is a plus since her plant is just a few miles away from it.
OWEN: We usually choose our transportation by which is the safest, the most economical and then also with the logistics of our customer. And, for many of our customers barge transportation is what they prefer.
EASTABROOK: The Mississippi continues to attract many new businesses like Abengoa Bioenergy. The company is building an 88 million gallon ethanol plant at the port. Abengoa has about a dozen other plants in the Midwest, but project development manager Carl Lafoy, says being on the Mississippi is vital to the company's growth.
CARL LAFOY, PROJECT DEVELOPMENT MGR., ABENGOA BIOENERGY: It definitely opens up a couple of additional key markets for us especially down in the Gulf coast that we would otherwise have a very hard time competing with rail down there.
EASTABROOK: In his three decades on the Mississippi, Ross Marcks has watched the barge business ebb and flow like the river itself. He's optimistic he'll have a place in the pilot house for several more years.
MARCKS: I don't look for it to slow down enough that it's going to affect me. Heck, I've been out here for 30 years. If they don't want to hire a pilot with 30 years of experience, I might as well go home. EASTABROOK: Diane Eastabrook, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT, Buffalo, Iowa.
