Maritime Activity Under the Radar

With about 30,000 vehicles passing daily over the Illinois Waterway via five bridges in the Peoria-Pekin area, one might think that the ongoing movement of river barges would be etched on our collective regional consciousness. Diesel-powered towboats pushing as many as 15 barges at a time are almost constantly in view on the Illinois, and their spectacle is especially impressive during the winter months, as the lash-ups plow through the ice floes lining the narrow channel. Yet most residents pay little heed to the local significance of maritime activity, perhaps assuming that the business is “just passing through” en route to some faraway place where somebody will unload whatever mysterious goods are sealed in those floating warehouses.

The anonymity of river transportation probably suits most of the industry players just fine. Like other transport modes, the barge and towing trade has been around seemingly forever and hasn’t recently seen dramatic technological breakthroughs. Today’s towboats are incrementally more powerful and the barge varieties more customized to the commodities they carry, but the concept is pretty much the same as it ever was. What has changed, much like rail and truck and air, is the regulatory environment, and the freedom barge carriers now enjoy to price their services based on volume and to transact almost all of their business under confidential contracts with their customers.

A few numbers help to put all this into perspective. In 2007, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers recorded just under 31 million tons of cargo moving through its Peoria Lock & Dam, located outside Pekin and readily visible from eastbound I-474. What might surprise some locals is that about 13 million of those tons originated or terminated within the six counties that line the river in central Illinois.

At last count, 38 barge terminal facilities are currently active in the region, most of them specialized for particular types of business. Not surprisingly, 21 of these terminals are oriented toward handling grain and related agricultural products, and are operated by integrated grain marketers like ADM, Cargill and Growmark/FS, as well as several farmers’ cooperatives. These are basically large grain elevators with a barge dock attached, and the huge volumes of corn, beans and sorghum they load are primarily headed south to an amalgam of even bigger elevators in southern Louisiana, where the contents eventually end up on deepwater vessels headed for export markets around the world.

The dominance of grain business gives the central Illinois cargo profile a decidedly southbound flair, and the big logistical challenge for the barge carriers is finding other types of cargo for the return haul back to the Illinois Waterway from the Gulf Coast. The range of northbound commodities is surprisingly diverse, including a mix of fertilizer, crude and refined petroleum products, coal, steel, and manufactured goods, offloaded at 17 docks in our area. The Heart of Illinois Regional Port District, branded as TransPORT, helps terminal operators promote these sites and publishes a regional river map indicating locations of all private facilities.

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