Operators · Mississippi River
Ingram Barge Company: where its towboats locked through
74 boats made 1,869 lockages, more than any other operator in our archive.
Ingram Barge Company towboats, listed in Corps data as Ingram Barge, made 1,869 lockages between 3 September and 4 October 2026. Seventy-four boats worked 72 locks and pushed 19,445 barges, about ten per lockage. No other of the 436 operators in our archive made more lockages. That is about 25 lockages per boat. The ten locks these boats used most account for 558 of the 1,869 lockages, 30%.
Where the boats ran
The Mississippi River accounted for 817 lockages and the Ohio for 478. The Gulf Intracoastal Waterway had 214, the Illinois Waterway 144, the Tennessee 107, the Cumberland 102 and the Tennessee-Tombigbee 7. 49% of lockages were upbound. 46% carried a hazardous-cargo flag.
| Lock | Lockages | Barges | Hours waited |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chain of Rocks Lock and Dam 27 | 77 | 806 | 146 |
| Port Allen Lock | 63 | 199 | 388 |
| Old Hickory Lock | 58 | 283 | 7 |
| Mel Price Lock and Dam | 57 | 712 | 56 |
| Smithland Lock and Dam | 55 | 696 | 174 |
Waits
The median lockage followed a 34-minute wait. One in ten followed a wait longer than 5.5 hours. Across all 1,869 lockages the boats waited 8,265 hours, about 344 days, or 4.4 hours per lockage on average.
Most of those hours come from one lock. Ingram boats made 49 lockages at Kentucky Lock on the Tennessee River and waited 5,090 hours there, 62% of the total and about 104 hours per lockage. The other 1,820 lockages averaged 1.7 hours of waiting. The next largest totals were at Olmsted (399 hours over 52 lockages), Port Allen (388 over 63), Lock and Dam 25 (253 over 28) and Smithland (174 over 55). 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.