Otherwise, the barges that carry about 1,700 tons of cargo apiece - 15 times the tonnage of a railcar and 40 times more than a truck can carry - are pretty much the same as they were in the 1920s.
That’s when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began dredging America’s large inland waterways to create deep channels to accommodate barge traffic.
A long barge, full of coal and pushed by a tug, makes the tricky turn around one of the bends in the Cumberland River in Kentucky.
Barges haul about five percent of the nation’s bulk tonnage, and business is relatively good.
Grain production has been booming, although more and more of the nation’s corn stays put on dry land for conversion to ethanol.
And the Ohio, in particular, is still jammed with coal barges feeding coal-fired power plants along the river.
But lucrative traffic in containers arriving from overseas has mostly bypassed the rivers in favor of roads, despite the higher cost of trucks and trains. Why? Because, unlike barge companies and captains, container shippers and their customers are in a hurry.
最新
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25