A few Great Lakes freighters on certain runs will remain operating all winter.
The locks at Sault Saint Marie stayed open all winter several times in the 70’s. It can be done but it’s more efficient all around to have some downtime so those experiments weren’t made permanent.
It’s only a matter of a few weeks anyways (For the American fleet, that is… ice closes the Welland Canal & St. Lawrence Seaway right around now each season but American vessels rarely stray from the upper Lakes). They stay open well into January before opening again a few weeks later in March. Gives some time to do maintenance on ships, locks, buoys, etc. And it gives the human element, especially those that have spent most if not all of the shipping season aboard ship, a chance to go home for a few weeks.
And it reduces the stress all around on the infrastructure, ships, and the human element by avoiding operating this time of year with extreme cold and heavy ice.
For bulk cargoes, shipping is a very viable option when available.
In 2010 it handled a whopping 5,000,000 tons. And that isn’t on an upward trend. Now 5,000,000 tons equates to less than three very modest size 5,000 net ton freight trains per day. So they (the Feds) peed away a couple billions in tax dollars to haul what three trains per day could easily handle.
But after 28 years you “Just Have A Feeling” that there will be future growth. If it ain’t happened in 28 years it’s probably not ever gonna’ happen. But you’ve got company. The idiot politicians and bureaucrats who peed away our money had that same “Feeling”. No rational reasoning and forecasting, but they had a “Feeling”,
Well, for Container on Barge to become “More Common” it would have to be “Common” in the first place. In North America it isn’t at all common. There are good, valid reasons why it’s not being used to any significant extent. You may deride double stack as a “Joke”, but it’s moving the freight while barges don’t do much at all with containers.
There is, and never was, any regulatory block to COB. There was a very real, very stupid, regulatory block to rail containerization. With the removal of that regulatory block rail container movement has grown and grown, Barge container movement remains insignificant. Which leads to the obvious question: “Why hasn’t COB developed?”
The answer is in the numbers you tout. A 15 barge tow of contain
Wouldn’t speed also be a factor in container-on barge vs. COFC ? Containers tend to be a higher value freight needing quicker transit than bulk commodities.
Thanks for the responses so far, but I fear this thread is veering off into tangents I didn’t expect.
Originally I asked (in summary), was it cheaper to ship ore rail-laker-rail vs an all rail routing in the year 1950 (chosen specifically because a number of inland integrated steel mills that would require the final rail-leg were still operating). I already pretty much knew the answer (it must have been cheaper, as the industry did it for many decades), although I don’t believe anyone so far established how much cheaper it would have been (even including the maintainence of the transload/unload facilities at the ports).
It was established that on occasion all-rail-routing was used, but apparently only during special conditions (e.g. winter shut-down) - so clearly while doable, all-rail routing must have been signficantly pricier than rail-laker-rail routing.
So does anyone have any hard numbers, or at least ball-park figures, on how much more economical rail-laker-rail routing would be.
NB: Lakers still handle Iron Ore shipping, but a bit of interesting news is that a new iron ore concentrator is being built in Reynolds, Indiana - planned opening 2014 - using an all rail routing from Minnesota. It’s a fair distance south of Gary, Indiana (Lake Michigan), much closer to Layfayette IN.
I would think the rails would offer faster service but the lake boats are about 7 times more efficient per ton mile as well as cleaner than rail for a given distance. When you talk trucks, lakers are about 20 times more efficient. The taxes lakers pay go into a pot that is supposed to look after harbor, channel, dock and lock maintenance. All one has to do is look at the budget of the US Army Corps of Engineers and you can see that a LARGE chunk goes for road and air maintenance, not the Great Lakes infrastructure. The last few years have seen lake boats run with less load due to the lack of effective dredging issues. If the lakers got their share of infrastructure maintenance they would be that mush more efficient. Check out SEAWAY REVIEW and Great Laker magazine. They have an annual issue wrapping up the seasons’ shipping with lots of comparative numbers. My only thoughts on river shipping is “stealing” water from the Great Lakes via the Chicago shipping and sewage canals to support adequate Mississippi River levels at the expense of lower lake levels leading to all kinds of environmental issues as well as hobbyist (sailors and fisherman). Last winter Lake Huron was at an all time low level. It rose 15 inches this summer and that wasn’t from lots of rain in the watershed up here. 3 of the other 5 Great Lakes were approaching all time lows this year too. Ideally I’d like to see the railways and Lake Boats work together more to get all those trucks off the roads and allow our highwways to last longer and reduce traffic. It’s getting so the interstates are slower than the old 2 lane roads they replaced.
OK. Any ore shipment from Minnesota/Michigan to a Great Lakes mill will be by ore boat if boats are available. All rails to lower lakes ports are mainly run in winter during high steel demand years. It was the same in the 1950’s as now. In the 1950’s lots of coal was backhauled. There is now very little backhaul available for the ore boats. Even coal now mainly moves east from Superior. The economics must be very compelling since coal for Detroit also moves from Wyoming/Montana to Superior by rail and is then transloaded to ships for the rest of the run. This is with infrastructure that has largely been built since 1980. On the other hand, there is no demand for transloading iron ore from Minnesota in St Paul for shipment to mills not on the Great Lakes. Most of them are on or near the Mississippi/Ohio systems. The following iron ore customers are not on the Great Lakes, followed by their ore source. USS Granite City Works, East Chicago IL, All rail from Minnesota. USS Fairfield, Birmingham AL, All rail from Minnesota. USS Edgar Thompson, near Pittsburgh PA, Primarily by rail from Conneaut OH. Some all rail from Minnesota in the past. AK Steel near Middleton OH. Both by rail from the Great Lakes and imported ore up the Mississippi and Ohio. This is the destination for the new pellet plant in Reynolds IN. Iron Dynamics, Butler IN. Canadian concentrate transshipped at Toledo to rail. Nucor in Louisiana, Imported ore up the Mississippi. Mesabi Nugget, Hoyt Lakes MN, by truck from their own mine. They do get a backhaul of coal and anthracite from out east. AHMSA, Mexico, All rail from Minnesota and other sources. The rest of the American mills and all of the Canadian mills are directly on the Great Lakes. Don’t ask about mills in Bethlehem or Fairless PA, northern West Virginia, Baltimore MD, Pueblo CO, or Geneva UT, they’re gone. May they rust in peace.
The iron ore pellet plant being built at Reynolds, IN was the subject of a thread about a year ago. It involves transporting fine concentrate from Minnesota to Indiana where it would be pelletized. As I recall, powered iron ore is something the the ships are not used to handling. Maybe redore remembers the details.
I imagine that it would be a difficult job for a self-unloader to handle which represents the entire active US laker fleet. But there are two idle American freighters that are still straight deckers that could easily handle it if they were willing to install shoreside equipment like bridge cranes to unload the cargo.
The Edward L. Ryerson would just need a 5 year survey and would be the perfect ship to handle such a cargo. The other, the John Sherwin, would need more work such as the installation of an engine but her owners were in the process of just such work after a now 30+ year layup back in 2008 when the recession hit. They just need a long-term cargo contract when the day hopefully comes that her capacity is needed to restart that project minus the self-unloading conversion.
Would be ironic if what has kept the Sherwin idle since late 1981 and the Ryerson (The most beautiful lake freighter of them all) for most of that time including the past 5 years would end up being their savior.
What was blocked? Intermodal transportation in the US was blocked.
By who? The Federal Economic regulators of the Interstate Commerce Commission.
Until when? The official date of rail intermodal deregulation was March 23, 1981. (Dereg started under Carter, certainly not stopped by Reagan.)
It’s important to remember that dereg was not like throwing a light switch. There were a bunch of guys at the railroads who had only worked under regulation. These guys pretty much had to leave before dereg could be fully exploited. I had a frustrating experience with the ICG freight claims folks when I tried to get into the banana business from Gulfport, MS to Chicago. They initially denied that dereg applied to their area. I had to set up a meeting with a bunch of lawyers who told them freight claims were part of the deregulation. Then the freight claims folks went nuts. They had no idea what to do. One of them shook a stack of papers at me proclaiming that “In 1978 (or whenever) the ICC told us how to handle freight claims.” The very idea of working out an agreement with a customer just unhinged them.
I think others have answered the bulk Laker economics vs train thing, so I’ll try to briefly go over the regulatory block to to rail container movement.
The development of motor transport accelerated the evolution of transportation. It introduced change and altered the role of the railroads. This change to a more efficient transportation system was a normal and beneficial part
As far as moving containers by vessel vs rail today, we need look no further than the Saint Lawrence Seaway corridor. Even though the foreign containers are already on board ships, both CNR and CPR take over the transportation to places such as Chicago, even though an all-water route is available. It might still require trans-shipment to a smaller seaway sized vessel, but that would be no more difficult than the transfer to rail. But it doesn’t happen.
In the past the railroads were less efficient and had a less competitive product, exacerbated by regulatory restrictions. Once the rails were allowed to market unit train rates, the cost differential was considerably reduced, with a significant speed advantage. And time is money, as the old saying goes.
As a fan of the New York Central, I’m familiar with the lighterage you’re referring to. Moving a few freight cars across a river is nothing like a 1000-foot ore boat carrying ore. 24’ ore cars hold about 70 tons of ore, and run in trains around 150 cars. It takes (IIRC) three or four trains to fill an ore boat…which works out to something like 75,000,000 lbs of iron ore. At their peak, an ore dock could load several ore boats a day, every day, all shipping season…and the DMIR and GN operated several ore docks at the same time.
That’s a lot of weight - and, on ground transportation, a lot of friction. It takes much less power to move a loaded boat than it would to move the same material on land, because friction is so much less. That’s why, even today, the majority of the world’s freight travels on water.
BTW, you’d have a lot of mainlines choked with ore trains. If the massive GN ore dock facility in Allouez WI could handle say just 10 ore boats a day (I think it was more), that would require maybe 40 140-50 car ore trains to replace them, all running at the same time at 30 MPH on your mainline…plus that many empty trains coming back.
The fact that 70% of the earth’s surface is water might also be a contributing factor to that statement. It’s a bit hard to ship a load of pineapples from Honolulu to Kansas City by an all-rail or all-highway route.
Even if all that is assumed to be correct, isn’t 30years largely free of that dead hand enough time to pass? Seems like the time to stop using that as an reason for dead thinking has long since passed.
All-rail iron ore trains were rare to virtually non-existent until the 1960’s. I suspect it became much more viable once you had diesels that could ‘run through’ with the train. With steam, you’d have to change engines several times along the route…plus the railroad(s) would have to have a number of large engines to haul the ore trains.