Shipping Out, Part 5: Filling Tow Boat with Diesel Fuel May Cost Over $200,000 

The power of these tow boats is amazing. With all that power must be a hoot with no barges attached! Bit like a dodgem car but on water.

Knowing this info is 9 years old it still is interesting views awesome also thankyou.

When talking in a lock no one says to the left or right. They say port or starboard. But most of the time they say how far above or below the long wall and how wide in feet

Towboats are still the most efficient haulers and use way less fuel than all the trucks used to haul the same amount of cargo.

I have seen an 1,800 foot long line... 1600 in barges with a 200 foot Towboat

195' by 35 ' for rake barges and 200' by 35 ' wide for box end barges. The largest tow I know of was pushed by the MV Miss Kae D(ACBL) back in 1978 when she took 72 barges past Memphis.Bet that was a lot of fun to check for water and tighten rigging every watch.

i was a deckhand on the dan mcmillen... 10'500 triple screw BIG.. 56 barges

EMD 645's, made by General Motors, are in this towboat, not Detroit Diesel.

2 way radio.....we used to do it by hand signals back in the day

I did ,too.Too many pilots got together and bought me my first walkie talkie because they couldn't tell how many fingers I was holding up when I signalled them.

Those are not Detroit brand engines ,,those are known as EMDs built by GM , maybe in the city Detroit ,,very reliable engines hands down,I'm not sure but I think there more than 4000 horse power also

the engines are GM/EMD's

Come on down to New Orleans I live there

I'm still marvelling that he didn't use river terminology for the narrative.

Stretch out nearly 1,000 feet.Thats almost the length of a Nimitz Class aircraft carrier

i hear ya. alot of sounder cord too!!!

Funny, those Detroit Diesels look a lot like EMDs.

Yeah buddy that would have been his first and last day talking a pilot through . 5 on ya left that's funny stuff

"5 feet to the left" hahaha

what boat are they on?

EMDs are not Detroit Diesels. also you may want to run a calculator over the number of hours claimed in a 'towing season', there's only 8760 Hrs in a year.

Lots of incorrect info here

i remember hand signals too

lol if I heard a deckhand talk like he did 'making a lock' I would walk over and smack the radio outta his hand and take over, comon ppl reserch a little!! left and right does not exist on any professional workboat....port and starboard!!

Barge season? Haha

fore and aft!!!

WA-PA-LOW

Those diesels are definitely Detroits. Back when, they'd have been called Clevelands, but now EMDs. Just FWIW.

Those are EMD's not detroits..

Joe Biden did that!!!

Music sure wasn't needed.