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Minnesota Department of
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395 John Ireland Blvd.
Mail Stop 150
St. Paul, MN 55155-1899
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Last towboat to leave St. Paul, ending 2009 river shipping season
Towboat M/V Coral Dawn leaves Dec. 2
Pushing a string of 12 barges containing corn and soybeans, the towboat M/V Coral Dawn will leave St. Paul Dec. 2 at night and make its way down the Mississippi River, officially bringing an end to the 2009 towing season on the river.
The 12 barges will carry more than 600,000 bushels or 18,600 tons of corn and soybeans, the equivalent of 744 semitrailer loads or roughly two 100-car train loads.
The 2009 towing season began March 23 and has run continuously for 254 days.
The last season this long was 2004 and the last time the season ended this late was 1999, according to Dick Lambert, director of the Minnesota Department of Transportation’s Ports and Waterways Section. Usually, the towing season ends around Thanksgiving so towboats avoid encountering ice build-up on the river.
Lambert attributes the late ending this year to above normal temperatures and a late harvest due to wet weather.
Each year, river barges move about 13 million tons of freight on the Mississippi River into and out of Minnesota. Inbound products include aggregates such as sand and gravel, fertilizers, salt, cement, coal and caustic soda, a chemical used in many manufacturing processes. Grain, the primary commodity shipped out of the state, averages about nine million tons per year. Other products shipped from Minnesota include potash, asphalt, scrap iron and petroleum.
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