Skip to content
MARAD Seal
Marine Highway Initiative Information Clearinghouse
Maritime Administration - MARAD -- Marine Highway Initiative

Special Benefits for Bulk and Hazmat Shippers

This is an invitation to explore the benefits of waterborne transportation. If you find this concept of interest, please contact one of the waterway service providers at the link below.

Waterborne transportation for bulk and hazmat commodities is being re-discovered as an attractive alternative to other forms of transportation. In almost every instance, waterborne transportation is:

Less Expensive

Because of the economies of scale involved in transporting commodities by water, significant cost savings can be achieved. Over 1 billion tons of commodities are shipped by water each year, at less than 2% of the national freight bill.

Reliable

Waterborne trade has been a backbone of the American economy for hundreds of years. While typically not as fast in transit time as other modes, waterway transportation can still deliver your important commodity according to pre-arranged time schedules.

Fuel Efficient

One reason waterborne transportation is more reasonably priced is because fuel demand on the power units (vessel engines) is much less than on other modes on a ton-mile basis. A typical barge can carry the cargo of 180 trucks!

Would you like to know more?

If you would like to know more about how short sea shipping can help meet your transportation needs, please contact one of the vessel operators listed here:

www.marad.dot.gov/sss/links

In Addition:

In order to be of assistance, a brief overview on how hazardous material shipments are regulated in the United States can be found here: http://hazmat.dot.gov/regs/overhml.pdf.

A more in depth overview of the regulations regarding of hazardous materials transport can be found here: http://hazmat.dot.gov/training/regs.htm.

And… the hazmat regulations themselves can be found as follows:

  1. The general regulations for shipping hazardous materials:
    • 49 CFR PARTS 171-180
  2. Special consideration for shipping Hazmat by water:
    • Domestic Packaged hazmat – 49 CFR 171-180 (49 CFR 176 contains vessel specific requirements)
    • Bulk Solids – 46 CFR 148
    • Bulk Liquids – 46 CFR 151-153

Here is a tool from the Government Printing Office that can help you see these regulations electronically: http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=ecfr&tpl=%2Findex.tpl