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Craig Philip, Ingram Barge Company CEO, on how the drought this summer has impacted his business.
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Now with more over the company it is.
I'm just going straight through in -- let's bring in trying to spell -- CEO of Ingram barge.
-- forgive us it's been quite a long -- and I'm sure for you to considering this drought.
And the -- Mississippi water level so.
Tell us how it's impacted your business.
Laurie thanks for inviting me to join you today.
We've been contending with low water this here since about June 1 although it's gotten worse in the last thirty days.
And our first most important priority in in dealing with a situation like we do -- all every day is to make sure that we are operating as safely as possible.
And we do that in collaboration with the other carriers -- -- using the system and with the Army Corps of Engineers that maintains a waterways and the US Coast Guard that is the traffic cop and I think overall we've done a remarkable job of avoiding any significant casualties as we face -- slow water.
In spite of the fact that it's leading to real hardships for the operators like -- that are that are contending with very difficult situations right.
Now and Craig isn't -- -- kind of airline analogy we you know we have delays in O'Hare Roy at JFK kind of is is situation where that -- traffic builds up very quickly see a lot of the delays is that the same situation on the Mississippi.
Well it's it's similar in away but the the airline analogy is a good one -- imagine if the the airline industry had been told in June 1 that.
That they were gonna have to operate all of their airplanes with 10% of the seats empty and then they got to July 1 and they were -- -- let's take another 10% of the seats out of service.
That's kind of what we've been facing as we've had to reduce the size of the toes that we operate the flow to those of barges from the tow boats and we've had to reduce the drafts of our barges.
So it's like operating our network at 75 or 80% of the capacity and it's really designed for.
And of course that has site impacts on our customers and we've been working hard to make sure that we can fulfill all of their obligations and says I'm sure all the other barge operators have been doing as well so.
Just -- -- you're not only dealing with these low water levels but also reduce cargo because of the drought affecting the green yields is that true.
It -- well -- -- we won't see the impact of the the drought on the harvest probably until the fall -- that's when most of the brain likes to move in this country.
So unfortunately anticipating that that the demands from our agriculture customers are likely to be.
Less robust than we'd like -- to be used again in October -- November.
Craig act I was just looking at -- some of these notes of the last time it's been of this bad with regards to the drought for the -- to level 1988.
How does this.
Compared to back them.
Well we're not we're not done yet the drought that here extended through the month of September.
And we're certainly hoping that we'll see some relief from some weather.
Maybe this hurricane we'll give us some some some rainfall in the heartland.
But it's it's really equivalent to 1988 in terms of the low waters that were experiencing today are every bit as low as those that we faced a year ago.
But I'd like to say that the in our judgment the the work that the Army Corps of Engineers has been doing over the last couple of decades to.
Improve the of the channels and the way that they managed to system I think it's had some positive effects relative to what we saw 25 years ago.
Now quickly Craig seems last year around this time you're dealing with.
Overflowing water levels actually went generic who knows -- -- country -- then and now you've got to low water levels and you really can't mess with mother nature we have how do you -- at all out it's gotta be -- frustrating for you.
Yeah we're we have places like Memphis where the water a year ago was nearly fifty feet higher in the Mississippi River than it is today and so it's I think it's a testimony to the resilience of the of the system that it's been built over the last century.
That the operators in collaboration with our government partners are able to.
To use the system in a safe and productive way.
Irrespective of what mother nature throws at us.
All right correct that thank you so much from the great city next best of luck to you coming up.
