The MAP Runner is a small boat that spends its days and nights moving barges around the busy harbor at the mouth of the Big Sandy River. Marathon Petroleum has a refinery acquired from Ashland Oil (now Ashland Global) a couple of miles up the Big Sandy. The MAP Runner and another small boat, the Tri State, ferry barges in and out of the Big Sandy to docks on the Ohio River, where the individual barges are assembled into large tows to be delivered to petroleum product terminals on the Ohio and other rivers. This was taken from Virginia Point Park in Kenova, West Virginia. That's South Point, Ohio, in the background. On this morning, the MAP Runner was headed to a barge fleeting area at South Point.
