Operators · Gulf Intracoastal Waterway
Canal Barge Company: where its towboats locked through
27 boats made 456 lockages, 258 of them on the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway.
Canal Barge Company towboats, listed in Corps data as Canal Barge, made 456 lockages between 3 September and 4 October 2026. Twenty-seven boats worked 47 locks and pushed 2,886 barges, about six per lockage. That ranks 17th by lockages among the 436 operators in our archive, at about 17 lockages per boat. The ten locks these boats used most account for 285 of the 456 lockages, 63%.
Where the boats ran
The Gulf Intracoastal Waterway accounted for 258 lockages. The Ohio River had 87, the Illinois Waterway 68 and the Mississippi 43. No lockages were recorded on any other river. 53% were upbound. Tow size followed the river. At Olmsted on the Ohio, 26 lockages moved 312 barges, 12 per lockage. At Calcasieu on the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, 57 lockages moved 186 barges, about three per lockage. 72% carried a hazardous-cargo flag.
| Lock | Lockages | Barges | Hours waited |
|---|---|---|---|
| Calcasieu Lock | 57 | 186 | 444 |
| Leland Bowman Lock | 54 | 173 | 211 |
| Port Allen Lock | 40 | 140 | 290 |
| Bayou Sorrel Lock | 40 | 135 | 104 |
| Olmsted Locks and Dam | 26 | 312 | 220 |
Waits
The median lockage followed a wait of 1.6 hours. One in ten followed a wait longer than nine hours. Across all 456 lockages the boats waited 1,666 hours, about 69 days, or 3.7 hours per lockage on average.
Five locks hold 76% of those hours. Calcasieu Lock accounts for 444 hours over 57 lockages, 27% of the total. Port Allen Lock added 290 hours over 40 lockages, Olmsted 220 over 26, Leland Bowman 211 over 54 and Bayou Sorrel 104 over 40. Waiting time is set by each lock and the queue ahead of it.
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.