Feeds
99981 items (1368 unread) in 22 feeds
CNN
(37 unread)
-
CNN.com - U.S. (31 unread)
-
-
MSNBC
(65 unread)
-
MSNBC.com: U.S. News (27 unread)
-
MSNBC.com: Business (10 unread)
-
PHP
(71 unread)
-
Planet PHP
(11 unread) -
Nettuts+
(60 unread)
Deals
(1087 unread)
-
Techbargains.com (339 unread)
-
dealnews - 20 most recent deals. (532 unread)
-
xpBargains.com (133 unread)
-
GottaDeal.com - Why Pay Retail?
(83 unread)
Tech
(21 unread)
-
broadbandreports.com (10 unread)
-
BetaNews.Com (11 unread)
Web Development
(34 unread)
-
Dev Shed - The Open Source Web Development Site
-
Dev Articles - Programming Help and Tutorials for all development technologies (34 unread)
-
developer.com
CNN Money
(49 unread)
-
CNNMoney.com
(40 unread)
-
CNNMoney.com - Economy News
(5 unread)
-
CNNMoney.com - Personal Finance
(4 unread)
Frugal Blogs
(4 unread)
-
Frugal Dad
(1 unread)
-
The Simple Dollar (3 unread)
CNNMoney.com - Economy News
-
America's untamable river trade
Posted: December 15th, 2011, 3:39pm MST
A standard barge is 35 feet wide and 195 feet long. It is 12 feet deep and sinks nine feet below the surface when loaded, pushing through the water like a brick. A standard tow has 15 of these barges -- three wide and five long -- winched together with cables and stretching nearly 1,000 feet, enough for the farthest point to disappear into the horizon at dusk and still be out of sight, hours later, in the mist of a new day. Barges are a terrible way to ship iPods, automobiles, and anything that goes in your living room, closet, or refrigerator. They are built for shipping coal and grain and cement and benzene and asphalt, the heavy and still vital materials of our economy, products that are measured by the thousand ton, bushel, and barrel. There's no bar code. No real schedule. The barge could arrive today. Or maybe tomorrow.