blogmaster's note: First barge transit of the season! The Mary Lynn hits the river today for a fertilizer haul to Brunswick Terminal. The Mary Lynn is a really cool, sleek towboat designed with a shallow draft for the Missouri River.
Originally Published in St. Louis Business Journal on March 22, 2011
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AGRIServices is starting its shipping season early, with eight barges of fertilizer set to leave St. Louis on Wednesday and arrive Sunday in Brunswick, in Chariton County in north-central Missouri.
The shipping season officially begins April 1, when the U.S. Coast Guard places navigational buoys on the river.
But “the water levels are good enough to get our shipping season started early, and we expect to be busy through mid-December,” said Kevin Holcer of Brunswick-based AGRIServices, in a statement. “We expect to increase our shipping efforts by up to 15 percent.”
AGRIServices will start pushing more than 9,000 tons of fertilizer up the Missouri River on Wednesday via the M/V Mary Lynn, a 3800-horsepower shallow draft boat.
The Missouri Department of Transportation, which supports waterways shipping on the Missouri River, said Jefferson City’s River Terminal expects to receive 6,000 tons of cement Tuesday, and that Hermann Sand and Gravel plans to start moving freight later this week.
"Our goal is to increase the freight moved on the Missouri River, increase connections to other transportation modes, and provide economic development opportunities along the river corridor,” Ernie Perry, freight development administrator for MoDOT, said in a statement.
MoDOT said expectations are for the biggest shipping season on the Missouri River in a decade. In 2010, about 334,000 tons of goods, or the equivalent of 13,000 tractor-truck loads, was shipped on the Missouri River, a 24 percent increase compared with 2009, according to MoDOT.
Perry said one barge carries the same amount of cargo as 70 semi-trucks or 16 rail cars.
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