Traffic Jam on the Illinois Waterway: Tugboats Are Busy Through the Holidays – Wall Street Journal

Tugboat companies have spent months getting stranded barges where they needed to go or sending empty barges to pick up waiting loads. One week earlier this month saw the highest grain tonnage of the year moving through a key Mississippi River lock. Volumes have been scaling back since. “This was an epic year on so many fronts,” including trade wars over grains and steel that held down volumes, hurting the shipping companies’ bottom lines, said Ken Eriksen, a transportation and infrastructure expert and senior vice president at IHS Markit. “It just never got to what one would consider normal routine operations.”