Barging Alaska waterways: tug and barge cargo transport offers economy, efficiency.

• Author: Bohi, Heidi
• Position: TRANSPORTATION

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

When steamships and supertankers ply through Alaska waters with a powerful, mysterious and romantic aura surrounding their sleek, massive hulls, they turn heads and set imaginations spinning. Where are they going? Where have they been? What precious cargo do they carry?

The barge--long, large, usually flat bottom and ungainly in comparison --looks like the homely sister, lacking style, freight stacked and wedged from bow to stern, every inch exposed to the elements. She's the one who gets handed the mop and pail while her sisters sail off into the evening.

It is fitting, then, that the bigger, heavier and uglier the cargo is, the more likely it is to end up on a barge, Jim Scholz, Alaska Sales and Shoreside Operations manager for Samson Tug and Barge says. Barges are used for very large, very heavy, very bulky items, because the cost of hauling goods by barge is very low. Waterways transportation is the most economical mode of commercial freight transportation. Due to the enormous capacity of a barge, a typical vessel can have a capacity 150 times greater than a rail car or 500 times greater than a semi trailer truck.

"Big, ugly, tough stuff, the things steamship carriers don't like to carry," Scholz says of what Samson hauls, including construction re-supply materials, steel, modular homes, oil rigs, huge pipe loads, massive pieces of machinery and seafood. "Because of the odd size that requires capabilities they don't have, they're not always set up to do it as well as we are."

TUG AND BARGE FLEET

Nationwide, today's fleet of nearly 4,000 modern tugboats and more than 27,000 barges move more than 800 million tons of raw materials and finished good each year. The industry also allows the United States to take advantage of one of its greatest natural resources--the 25,000-mile waterway system--and adds $5 billion a year to the U.S. economy. It is also the most environmentally friendly mode of commercial transportation because the greater fuel efficiency of tugboats results in cleaner air.

Although some operators are building customized vessels that are larger, wider, and longer, with more efficient hulls for drafting through Alaska waters, a typical oceangoing barge measures 300 feet to 400 feet long by 80 feet to 100 feet wide and can carry up to 5,000 tons of cargo. The smaller, shallower draft barge is also a big advantage. Many coastal communities have harbors too shallow to allow deeper draft ships into their...