Lemont Bridge

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Each year transportation companies move heavy cargo in and out of the Great Lakes via the inland river system. One of the biggest challenges they can face is the fixed, Lemont railroad bridge at mile marker 300.3. With around 19’ of air gap for the oversized cargo, many heavy haulers are forced to transload their cargo from ABS deck barges to inland hopper barges. This extra transload operation can be extremely expensive for a job and might not be necessary.

With Ashton Marine’s new Great Lakes ABS hopper barges, we can skip the extra transload. We can mobilize one or both of our barges to the loading site and send it directly down river or northbound to the lakes. Some people have asked why can’t they just use a regular inland hopper barge? The short answer is, equipment operating outside of the Chicago area needs to be classed by the American Bureau of Shipping and inland river barges are not built to this specification. If you are only moving cargo to the Chicago area, then an inland hopper barge will work just fine.

If you have any oversized cargo that is originating on the Great Lakes and needs to go down river or vice versa, please give us a call and let’s see if we can save you enough money on transportation to help you land that next job.