Lowndes County port authority speeds up production with new crane

LOWNDES COUNTY,Miss. (WCBI)- Business is rollin’ on the river.

This is after the Lowndes County Port Authority is speeds up production.

Mississippi Department of Transportation awarded nearly $800,000 for the port to purchase a new crane.

Now, boats and vessels on the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway can load and unload at a faster pace.

Hauling in stone, gravel, and other materials from barges just got a little quicker.

” Whether you’re on the canal or whether you’re on the highways or sitting at a port facility, time is money,” said the Commissioner of Transportation John Caldwell.

Caldwell works as the commissioner in the Northern District. He says cost of production will be lower.

“When you can bring in a piece of equipment like this that can speed that time up everyone is going to win on that,” said Caldwell.

” We have only a certain amount of time to get these barges unloaded until they start charging us to merge where the boat is sitting and that’s very expensive. With this here it’s made us get it out in a real timely fashion,” said Port Manager Eddie Rushing.

Rushing says the crane cost a little over a million dollars.

$739,000 grant is being awarded by MDOT. The port is covering $481,000.

Port and Waterways Director Robby Burt believes it’ll bring more economic opportunities to the area.

“Water is the most efficient and safest way to actually move products and it lends itself to larger bought materials like they handle typically at this port. It’s going to continue to grow. Traffic on the Tennessee-Tom river is going to grow,” said Burt.

And with a newer model, the time it took to finish a job is cut in half.

“We went from about seven hours of 1,500 ton barges to about four hours. We’ve cut off about three hours worth of time unloading so that makes us more efficient. It makes us more attractive to way we can bid jobs a little cheaper and actually be more competitive with the other parts of the margin bringing materials in,” said Rushing.

Port officials say the process of off loading materials will gradually progress as the equipment is used.