Operators · Ohio River
American Commercial Barge Line: where its towboats locked through
46 boats made 944 lockages at 79 federal locks in 33 days.
American Commercial Barge Line towboats, listed in Corps data as American Commercial Barge Lines, made 944 lockages between 1 September and 4 October 2026. Forty-six boats worked 79 locks and pushed 8,823 barges, about nine per lockage. That is the fourth-highest lockage count of the 436 operators in our archive, and about 21 lockages per boat. The ten locks these boats used most account for 346 of the 944 lockages, 37%.
Four rivers carry most of the traffic
The Ohio River accounted for 310 lockages, the Mississippi 269, the Illinois Waterway 170 and the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway 152. The rest were on the Tennessee (24), the Tennessee-Tombigbee (9), the Black Warrior-Tombigbee (8) and the Cumberland (2). Half the lockages were upbound. 34% carried a hazardous-cargo flag.
| Lock | Lockages | Barges | Hours waited |
|---|---|---|---|
| Olmsted Locks and Dam | 65 | 806 | 398 |
| John T. Myers Lock & Dam | 37 | 458 | 40 |
| Lockport Lock | 34 | 176 | 21 |
| Smithland Lock and Dam | 34 | 469 | 125 |
| Chain of Rocks Lock and Dam 27 | 32 | 449 | 68 |
Waits
The median lockage followed a 42-minute wait. One in ten followed a wait longer than six hours. Across all 944 lockages the boats waited 2,701 hours, about 113 days, or 2.9 hours per lockage on average.
A few locks hold most of those hours. Four lockages at Kentucky Lock on the Tennessee River account for 551 hours, 20% of the total. Olmsted added 398 hours over 65 lockages, Port Allen Lock 213 over 29, Calcasieu Lock 162 over 25 and Brazos East Gate 143 over 10. Waiting time is set by each lock and the queue ahead of it. Our Kentucky Lock article covers why waits there run longest.
How the numbers are counted
Wait runs from a tow's arrival at the lock to the start of its lockage. Tows still waiting when we collected the data have no lockage yet, so these totals leave out waits in progress. Operators are matched from the Corps' 2022 vessel file and FCC licences, so a boat sold since may be listed under a previous operator.
Related
Sources: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Lock Performance Monitoring System, archived by Lock Wait; chamber dimensions and opening year from the BTS National Transportation Atlas; operators from the USACE Waterborne Transportation Lines (2022) and FCC ship licences. Wait is measured from arrival to start of lockage. How every number is defined.