No Port No Problem: Alaska's plane and barge driven rural shipping industry.

• Author: Friedman, Sam
• Position: TRANSPORTATION

The prices for fuel and food surprise many first time visitors to rural Alaska towns. In Fort Yukon, on the upper Yukon River 135 miles northeast of Fairbanks, a gallon of heating oil cost $6.35 this fall. A dozen eggs at Fort Yukon's Alaska Commercial Company store cost $5.99.

But these prices seem less remarkable in light of all the work, fuel, and logistics it takes to transport these goods to remote Alaska towns and villages.

This time of year, the barges have finished their season traveling the Yukon River. Barge business Ruby Marine, the only major barge company on the Upper Yukon, serves Fort Yukon with three barge deliveries each summer in June, July, and August. By October, even if it's been warm and the river is far from freezing, it's not practical to operate large barges.

"The end of the season has stretched. Septembers and Octobers have been pretty damn nice, but it doesn't help with water levels," says Ruby Marine President Matt Sweetsir. "Whether it's nice out or not, the mountains are freezing, so the runoff from the Tanana River stops about mid-August, end of August. Water levels are in steady decline from that point on. It's really running out of water that drives us home."

Items such as eggs and other groceries are mostly delivered by air cargo companies, which work all winter. But even for these companies, summer is the busy season because that's when fishing and construction jobs are taking place. Air cargo allows people to get things delivered in as short a window as one day.

"Time sensitive items are needed all the time. We're shipping boat motors, four-wheelers, household goods, and drill rigs," says Lee Ryan, vice president of Ryan Air, a major Western Alaska air cargo company that serves seventy-three villages from seven hub communities.

"We're really busy in the summertime. And then when it freezes up, we're [continuously] busy through PFD season."

Getting the cargo to rural communities takes a network of jet and large turboprop mainline carriers like Alaska Airlines and smaller downline providers like Ryan Air. The downline airlines can deliver to bush communities and even remote camps with small piston-driven airplanes.

For communities with no road or ice-free sea access, air freight is the only practical way to bring in supplies during the winter. When rivers freeze and barge service stops for the year, plow trucks keep busy clearing runways at the dozens of state-owned airports around Alaska.

The Barge Business

At Ruby Marine's home port in Nenana, Sweetsir sounds matter-of-fact and not even particularly bitter as he talks about how air cargo has taken most of the rural cargo market share from the river barge industry in his lifetime.

Sweetsir has been in the river barge business for thirty-nine years. He...