Business View Magazine - November 2016

86 Business View Magazine - November 2016 ton of cargo shipped through our Port.” While shipping is a competitive enterprise, and in some respects, all the ports along the waterway com- pete with rail and truck transport, Yarbrough stresses that, for some customers, water transportation is the only solution. “If it was not for the waterway, farmers in southeast Kansas would not be able to get their goods to market and be competitive in a global market,” he maintains. “And when it comes to low-margin com- modities – Arkansas, for instance, has a pretty sub- stantial sand and gravel business. The margins are so slim on those types of commodities that without the waterway, they’re out of business; they can’t afford to subsist in an environment where all they have is truck or rail.” In its ongoing pursuit to better serve its tenants and their customers, Yarbrough says that the Port has re- cently completed a $13 million dock renovation proj- ect. “We applied for and were a recipient of a TIGER (Transportation Infrastructure Generating Economic Recovery) grant,” he explains. “It’s a program that came about right after the current administration took office, whereby they funnel funds for infrastruc- ture projects, nationwide. We competed for, and were awarded a $6.425 million grant. We matched that and exceeded it with our own capital. We renovated our 45 year-old dock – all new concrete, new fenders on the face of it; we took down our original, two-hundred ton, overhead bridge crane and replaced all the compo- nents; laid 6,000-plus linear feet of new railroad track on our dock to make us better at transloading from