Sunday, March 18, 2018

O M/V Buckeye State, Where Art Thou?


On the Upper Mississippi, the last I looked.

Back a couple of years ago, when ACBL completed its acquisition of most of AEP's towboats, I wondered where the AEP boats would be and how many  I would see again. As it turned out, I haven't seen that many of them on a regular basis.

That's particularly true of the Buckeye State, once a regular visitor to this  area here around Mile 308. I don't know that it's been up this far once the sale was completed and the former AEP boats were integrated into the ACBL fleet.


But AEP kept some of its newer 6,000-horsepower boats, and today we got to see one as the M/V Chuck Zebula passed through our area pushing 15 loads of limestone.



At the rate the Zebula was going and judging from the size of the wake behind boat, a power plant on the AEP system must have called for a quick delivery of stone to keep its scrubbers going. But that's just a guess.




1 comment:

Anonymous said...

ACBL has kept the newer 6000's mostly on the lower and upper to St. Louis. The Buckeye actually played around with a bow thruster last year and made several trips taking 36 loads from Cairo to the Gulf and even made one trip with 42 loads.