The Great Lakes Tow­ing Com­pa­ny com­plet­ed an Inter­modal “Short Sea” barge move uti­liz­ing the Port of Cleveland’s Rail Loop and the Port’s switch­ing line, Cleve­land Har­bor Belt Railroad.

Nor­folk & South­ern inter­changed the rail car car­ry­ing the 114 met­ric ton trans­former to Cleve­land Har­bor Belt Rail­road to bring the rail­car via the loop to the dock-face under the Port’s heavy lift crane. The car­go was trans­ferred to a barge and was towed by the Tug OHIO to Marysville, Michi­gan for deliv­ery to DTE Ener­gy Elec­tric Com­pa­ny (for­mer­ly The Detroit Edi­son Com­pa­ny). The tug-barge tran­sit time from Cleve­land, Ohio to Marysville, Michi­gan took 20 hours and the dis­charge of the heavy lift car­go took 1 hour and 21 minutes.

The Rail Loop and the Cleve­land Har­bor Belt Rail­road con­nects the Port of Cleve­land to the two Ohio Class I rail car­ri­ers, Nor­folk & South­ern and CSX. The Port and the Tow­ing Com­pa­ny pro­vide an inte­grat­ed solu­tion for their cus­tomers, mak­ing ship­ping more cost and time effec­tive, and pro­vid­ing inter­na­tion­al and domes­tic ship­pers a bet­ter inter­modal route to the Midwest.

The Port’s Rail Loop project was inau­gu­rat­ed on Sep­tem­ber 27, 2012. The project was coor­di­nat­ed by the Ohio Rail Devel­op­ment Com­mis­sion (ORDC) with fund­ing of $3 mil­lion from the State’s Logis­tics and Dis­tri­b­u­tion Fund and a $1.5 mil­lion Port con­tri­bu­tion. At the time, it was hoped that this rail ele­ment would pro­vide the Port of Cleve­land a larg­er cus­tomer base that could take advan­tage of rail and water logis­tics and extend the reach of the Port of Cleve­land to the Mid­west. This rail and water logis­tics move­ment is an exam­ple of the Port’s abil­i­ty to pro­vide seam­less logis­tics trans­fers in Cleve­land, mak­ing ship­ping more cost effective.

Con­tact Gregg Thau­vette, Vice Pres­i­dent of Oper­a­tions for Inter­modal “Short Sea” barge move­ments and vis­it our web­site at www.thegreatlakesgroup.com/intermodal

Port Pres­i­dent Will Fried­man, for­mer Port Chair Bob Smith, Cleve­land Har­bor Belt Rail­road Com­pa­ny Co-Own­er Bill Brown, and Ronald Ras­mus, Chair­man of the Tow­ing Com­pa­ny, and a Com­mis­sion­er of the Ohio Rail Devel­op­ment Com­mis­sion unveiled the new-on-dock rail loop on Sep­tem­ber 27, 2012 when they cut through the ribbon.