Barge Market Tightens Amid Construction Boom
By Simon West
From Issue 4, 2024 of Breakbulk Magazine
(1-minute read)
Barges and tugs play a crucial role transporting project cargo on the roughly 12,000 commercially navigable miles of inland and intracoastal waterways in the U.S., much of which is comprised by the Mississippi River and its channels.
But an infrastructure drive fueled by federal stimulus programs and investment in energy sectors such as offshore wind and natural gas are putting pressure on marine transport companies to meet rising demand for these specialized vessels.
“The U.S. has a finite number of barges and there are long lead times to build new ones. So right now we have a very tight market for all barge classes, which we haven’t seen for a long time,” said Benjamin Smith, vice president of operations at Stevens Towing, a freight transport company based on Yonges Island, South Carolina. “Expansion is going to happen, but it’s not going to happen rapidly.”
Steve Frank, sales manager for heavy-lift at Ceres Barge Line, an asset-based marine transportation firm based in St. Louis, Missouri, pointed to the growing use of waterways to deliver heavy components for capital improvement projects and power grid upgrades.
“This type of cargo seems to keep getting larger, eliminating road and rail as an option and creating at least one barge leg to get closer to the final destination,” Frank told Breakbulk.
“At the moment, equipment availability is a challenge for project cargoes and construction as there are multiple large projects going on simultaneously that are sucking up a lot of barge equipment. Clients are even holding barges long term, sometimes sitting idle just so they have them on standby and ready at their beckon call. With steel prices being on the high side, not as many newbuilds are coming out to either increase capacity or replace existing equipment. All of this is driving rate increases to compensate capacity and for future builds.”
Read more: Barge Revival on US West Coast
Ceres Barge Line will be exhibiting at Breakbulk Americas 2024 on 15-17 October at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, Texas.
PHOTO CREDIT: Ceres Barge Line
