Downbound Grain Barge Rates: Three Month Future Rates

Weekly barge rates in future months for downbound freight originating from seven locations along the Mississippi River System. This dataset shows rates for transactions three months in the future.

The U.S. Inland Waterway System utilizes a percent-of-tariff system to establish barge freight rates. The tariffs were originally from the Bulk Grain and Grain Products Freight Tariff No. 7, which were issued by the Waterways Freight Bureau (WFB) of the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC). In 1976, the United States Department of Justice entered into an agreement with the ICC and made Tariff No. 7 no longer applicable. Today, the WFB no longer exists, and the ICC has become the Surface Transportation Board, which does not have jurisdiction over barge rates on the inland waterways. However, the barge industry continues to use the tariffs as benchmarks for rate units.

Each city on the river has its own benchmark, with the northern most cities having the highest benchmarks. They are as follows: Twin Cities = 619; Mid-Mississippi = 532; St. Louis = 399; Illinois = 464; Cincinnati = 469; Lower Ohio = 446; and Cairo-Memphis = 314.

To calculate the rate in dollars per ton, multiply the percent of tariff rate by the 1976 benchmark and divide by 100: (Rate * 1976 tariff benchmark rate per ton)/100. As an example, a 271 percent tariff for a St. Louis grain barge would equal 271 percent of the St. Louis benchmark rate of $3.99, or $10.81 per ton.

Querying over HTTP

Splitgraph serves as an HTTP API that lets you run SQL queries directly on this data to power Web applications. For example:

curl https://data.splitgraph.com/sql/query/ddn \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
    -d@-<<EOF
{"sql": "
    SELECT *
    FROM \"internal-agtransport-usda-gov/downbound-grain-barge-rates-three-month-future-uuhv-5etw\".\"downbound_grain_barge_rates_three_month_future\"
    LIMIT 100 
"}
EOF

See the Splitgraph documentation for more information.