Sam Lynch, who is in training to be a towboat pilot, used a tricky maneuver to get his boat and the 20 barges it was pushing down the Mississippi River.This will hit you, to some degree, right in the wallet. One of the keys to our nation's economic power has been the river system, which makes shipping large quantities of stuff around much of the country as cheap as possible. Normally, one tugboat can move a few freight-trains's (or a shitload of trucks) worth of cargo. In other words, the efficiency of river barges can't be beat.
He brought the boat into the beginning of a curve, then backed it out a little bit so the current would slowly take the barges downstream and the boat would straighten up behind.
It was all designed to keep the barges safely within the deepest part of the river, which is near historic low levels as the drought that has gripped the nation is making navigation of the formerly wide Mississippi treacherous.
Less cargo per tug means that the shipping costs go up. These costs get passed along.
Of course with the drought, there is less stuff to move.
ReplyDeleteAnother price increase.
Lovely days to wake up for, aren't they.
w3ski