The Tulsa Port of Catoosa is renovating a roll-on, roll-off dock that project shippers use to move heavy and oversized cargoes between land-locked Oklahoma and the Mississippi River system and Gulf of Mexico.
Renovation of the port’s low-water ro-ro dock follows the completion in 2016 of a two-year, $13 million rebuilding of the main dock at the Tulsa-Catoosa port, which sits at the head of the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Waterway.
Work on the port’s 750-foot-long main dock included construction of a new wharf, renovation of the dock’s 200-ton-capacity bridge crane, and relocation of a 40,000-square-foot transit shed to increase open storage by more than one-third.
The ro-ro dock is getting new concrete surfacing after nearly 40 years of wear and tear from heavy shipments. The dock itself sits on solid limestone, and has handled shipments weighing as much as 600 tons.
Port director David Yarbrough said the improvements will help Tulsa-Catoosa maintain its unique niche in breakbulk and project cargo. Most of the port’s volume — 2,259,346 tons last year and as much as 2.7 million tons in peak years is bulk materials. However, those totals have included as much as 200,000 tons of breakbulk and project cargo.
Tulsa-Catoosa has handled big project shipments on a monthly basis, and has at least four or five of them a year, Yarbrough said.
“We’re a big part of the supply chain for companies like Barnhart, Mammout, and Deep South,” Yarbrough said. “These heavy haulers use the river system and port for oversized cargo that won’t fit or are uneconomical to move by road or rail.”
The Tulsa-Catoosa port is 445 miles upstream from where the Arkansas River empties into the Mississippi. Over the years, the port has handled shipments to or from the Port of New Orleans and from other points as far east at Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Steel volumes have slumped at Tulsa-Catoosa. When the demand fell, some steel buyers opted to limit inventories. “Rather than tie up resources with a barge full of 50 coils, they started moving smaller quantities by rail and truck and paying the higher shipping rates,” Yarbrough said.
However, Yarbrough sees hints of recovery. A pipe processor at the port recently reactivated its plant after an 18-month shutdown.
Despite its location far inland, or possibly because of it, the Tulsa-Catoosa port has developed into a manufacturing and distribution hub. The county-owned port leases industrial sites to more than 70 companies that directly employ more than 3,000 workers. More than 1,000 trucks move in and out each day.
Industrial tenants enjoy leases on tax-exempt land, and the port receives a steady income stream. Lease revenue provides about 65 percent of the port’s budget. The remainder is generated from operations, including railcar and barge switching.
Like other inland waterway users, Yarbrough is concerned about backlogged federal funding of maintenance and repair of locks and dams. He said the US Army Corps of Engineers “does a good job of allocating funds to take care of maintenance needs, but they don’t have enough funding.”
There are 18 locks on the McClellan-Kerr waterway’s 445 miles between Tulsa-Catoosa and the Mississippi River. They’re still functioning properly, and are among the newest on the inland system, but they’re close to their 50-year design life.
The Corps used to drain two locks each year for scheduled maintenance and repairs. “Now they can do it only when something goes wrong,” Yarbrough said. “It’s like a car. You can delay putting oil in the car for so long until a piston burns out and you have to rebuild the engine.”
