Great Lakes Fleet is technically American owned, which was necessary to satisfy the provisions of the Jones Act.
The American Steamship Company has 12 ships. They've been sold to Rand Logistics, the owners of Lower Lakes, but are believed to continue to operate as a separate fleet going into the future rather than merging operations.
The Interlake Steamship Company has fewer ships and their tonnage is still less than today's reduced ASC fleet can handle (ASC's fire damaged St. Clair is believed to be constructive total loss, two other vessels have gone off lease and moved elsewhere in recent years, and the 5 ships they sold to Algoma Central).
Backshop
There has been a trend on the Great Lakes of going over to tug/barge co mbinations. While some of the barges have been new builds, most are the cargo compartments of older freighters with uneconomical steam turbine powerplants.
Thankfully, the trend has reversed course in the 2000's.
All the mainstream operators on the Great Lakes like the Interlake Steamship Company that experimented with this concept have left it behind with their fleet modernization programs. They're all back to repowering old ships or buying new ships, not barging ships or building new ATB's.
This is thanks to a variety of factors that I'll try to list below.
- Tightening of regulations on ATB's and ITB's like hull surveys, reducing their savings over a traditional ship.
- Decreased crew sizes on ships, bringing them close to the crew cost of a big tug.
- Inherent fuel disadvantage of the hull form thanks to where the tug mates with the barge disturbing how the hull cuts through the water. This perhaps more than anything else has swung the pendulum away from the ATB/ITB concept for the large US fleets and both Canadian giants.
The big exception in the 2000's are the fringe operators around the Great Lakes. Van Enkevort is now a significant operator in the ore and stone trade on the lakes and operates three large self-unloading ATB's all built new in the past 20 or so years (And the barged Joseph A. Thompson). They seem to still be a believer.
And some small operators have barged old steamers in the 2000's. The St. Mary's Challenger is a sad example, but notching her and buying a used tug was much cheaper than repowering and won the day. And with her short runs and regular layups during the course of a season, the decreased fuel efficiency was viewed as not being a big issue.
K&K Warehousing was another, barging the Buckeye and Reserve from the Oglebay Norton fleet in the late 2000's (Now sailing for the US arm of Lower Lakes).
Paul Milenkovic
I am being picky, but I believe the correct term of art is towboat when he are talking about a boat acting as a road locomotive to one or more barges? A tugboat is more akin to a switch engine that directs a ship in a terminal area? Why would people do this on the open Great Lakes. Those waters can experience non-trivial storms as many historic shipwreck disasters atest, and is this river-barge tow arrangement such a great idea?
They're a far cry from a Mississippi River towboat pushing a group of barges. One never hears the term towboat used for the types of vessel combinations he's talking about.
They're called "articulated tug barges" or "integrated tug barges" (Depending on how the tug connects to the barge). They're essentially a Great Lakes freighter in everything but name, taking advantage of loopholes to deliver savings to the operator over a traditional ship.
Here's a good example of one from the Interlake fleet converted from a classic steam powered freighter.
And some of the giants that were built this way from the keel up, even look like a ship at first glance from many angles.
