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Farmington, Mo | I’m sure there are several of you who haul grain into St. Louis. We take ours to CGB or Louis Dreyfus both in Cahokia, Il which is about 3 miles south of the Gateway Arch. For those who don’t know, these facilities have little to no storage. They are setup as direct from truck to barge.
Usually When we haul(non harvest season), delays are minimal. You may have to occasionally sit 20-30 mins while they switch barges, but they usually have two or three empties lined up waiting so all they have to do is slide them down and keep rolling.
Lately, there have been some ridiculous delays getting barges. From what I have seen, the volume of trucks isn’t that high for the capacity they have(each dock can dump three trucks at a time).
Just yesterday, my Dad took a load of corn. He arrived at 3pm and didn’t get unloaded until 10:30!! The whole time he was waiting was due to not having a barge. I had a two hour wait for the same reason on Friday and I have witnessed other similar delays off and on throughout the past few weeks.
So my question is this; is the demand for barges in St. Louis harbor so high that the barge companies can’t keep up? Is it due to high water levels? Or is there something else going on? These are also trans-loading facilities where they transfer grain from unit trains to barges. I presume the trains come from the upper Midwest and northern plains??
Only reason I post this here is if there is a major bottleneck at the biggest midstream harbor on the systemwhat effect it may have on marketing grain up and down the river?........
.......Or am I just spoiled and I just need to suck it up and wait? ;) | |
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St Louis Port Delays
