Christened at a ceremony held in New Orleans yesterday, American Commercial Barge Line’s latest vessel, M/V ACBL Mariner is the most powerful towboat ever built for Mississippi River operations.
What that translates into is the capability to push up to 64 barges at once, equivalent to over 75,000 tons of cargo, along the Mississippi River. This huge barge capacity has a surface area of nine acres, easily surpassing the 4.5 acre surface area of the Navy’s Ford and Nimitz class aircraft carriers.