WELLSVILLE, Ohio – The towboat Miss Brooke chugs up the Ohio River on a frigid December morning, comes about, and slides into position behind a covered barge that 15 minutes earlier bade farewell to its last load of barite at the Port of Ohio at Pier 48 in Wellsville.
From here, the small boat will push the now empty barge along the Ohio to another destination, where it will reload and return with fresh cargo.
At a second dock, a large crane dips into an open section of another barge, this one carrying steel coil from mills in the southern and western portions of the country.
The coils are then loaded onto trucks that move north through Columbiana County along state Route 11, bound for customers in the Mahoning Valley and beyond.
It’s routine business at the Columbiana County Port Authority’s Wellsville Intermodal Facility. Steel, barite, organic soybeans, ore and minerals are among the staple products shipped into this Ohio River terminal each week.
Yet many of these barges leave empty, a fact that development specialists are working to reverse. It’s just one of the objectives of Lake to River Economic Development, a regional network partner of JobsOhio created in 2024 that covers Mahoning, Trumbull, Columbiana and Ashtabula counties.
Inbound and into the Local Economy
John Frankovich, president of Port of Ohio at Pier 48, which manages loading and unloading operations at the Wellsville site, says barges are “the greenest, safest and most cost-efficient way to move material per ton. The Ohio River and the inland river system is vital to the United States. We can move these large cargoes of material cheaply and easily.”

Frankovich says the Wellsville terminal deals primarily with three commodities. Barges moving up the river from the south carry organic soybeans from Argentina and India; move steel coil manufactured at mills from Arkansas to Kentucky; and deliver barite sulphate, mined in India, China or in the American southwest.
These commodities are factors in northeastern Ohio’s economy, Frankovich says, and the Wellsville port plays an important role.
“We unload about 200 to 260 barges a year,” he says.
Barite, for example, is a rocky mineral that is used throughout the oil and gas industry. The material is transported to a processing plant just yards away from the Wellsville docks that is owned by Georgia-based Cimbar Performance Minerals.
The material is pulverized and ultimately used by energy companies as a weighting agent in drilling mud, a substance applied to oil and gas wells to cool and lubricate drill bits.
Soybeans – while readily grown in Ohio and Pennsylvania – are also imported from South America. The beans are placed on barges in New Orleans, move up the Mississippi River, and then push their way through the Ohio River to Wellsville, where they are unloaded and delivered to a processor within an hour’s drive.
Steel moving from mills in the South and West is unloaded in Wellsville and transported to processors, service centers and customers throughout the entire region, Frankovich says. “All of the steel that we handle is domestic,” he says.
The port is integral to the local economy and to PI & I Motor Express, Masury, which hauls steel coil and pipe and tube from the Wellsville docks, says owner and president Joe Kerola.
“It’s a big part of the supply chain,” Kerola says. “We have three or four customers that get multiple barges a month.”
On average, Kerola says his company hauls approximately 200 loads a month totaling 4,000 tons from the Wellsville complex.
“It’s soft right now and volumes have been impacted,” he says. “If things pick up, the 4,000 tons could rise to between 5,000 and 6,000 tons. It’s been more than that in the past. So it might pick up.”
Frankovich says overall traffic along the river has remained steady for the last 15 years, despite the decline of coal shipments.
“Coal used to be 75% of barge traffic,” he says. “It’s down to about 50% now.”
Higher volumes of aggregates and other materials have helped fill some of the void left by coal.
Most of the barge traffic into the Wellsville Intermodal Facility is inbound. Few barges leave filled with products bound for other markets, Frankovich says.
“We ship out some steel coil but mostly we’re unloading,” he says.
On average, it takes approximately three hours to unload a barge of steel coil, and between four and six hours to transfer barite from a standard 200-foot long, 35-foot-wide barge, he says. These barges can hold up to 1,900 tons, or 3.5 million pounds of material.
“Soybeans take about eight hours,” Frankovich says. “Business comes in waves.”
During grain season, for example, many of the river barges are busy transporting agricultural goods, creating a shortage of available boats for other products.
“We don’t send much grain out but a lot of others do,” he says.
Outbound and into the Global Economy
Other interests along the 10-mile stretch of riverfront in Columbiana County thrive on exports to the world stage. Among these is Heritage Cooperative, an agricultural co-op based in Lisbon that operates a terminal on the river in East Liverpool. It is a vital link between the local agricultural industry and international markets.
“We ship corn, soybeans and wheat – mostly soybeans and corn – on the river system,” says Ralph Wince, grain merchandiser for Heritage. “All of it is grown in northeastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania.”
Simply put, Wince buys in bulk from regional farms and then sells the cargo to buyers in New Orleans. Those customers then sell the products to international brokers.
Soybeans, for example, are loaded on barges and then transported down the Ohio, into the Mississippi and to New Orleans. From there, the cargo is transferred onto larger ships, which are dispatched through the Panama Canal, and then likely bound for ports in China.
“China is the No. 1 purchaser of U.S. soybeans,” Wince says. The largest buyer of U.S. corn, he adds, is Mexico, whereas the second largest customer is Japan.
“Some of that would also work its way there, too,” he says. “The river system here is vital.”
Each barge handles approximately 60,000 bushels, or approximately 60 semi truck loads, according to Wince. This January, Heritage is scheduled to ship 1.1 million bushels of soybeans to the Gulf.
“We’re shipping the heaviest right now,” he says, noting the most active period falls between the October harvest and mid-February. “There’ll probably be between 3 million and 3.5 million shipped from the harvest until now.”
Once the soybean supply recedes, Heritage steps up its shipments of corn. By March, approximately a quarter of his shipments are soybeans and the rest corn.
Heritage’s terminal in East Liverpool also sustains higher prices among farmers in the region, Wince says. Buyers that purchase grain for domestic use must outbid the export price, he says. So the very existence of Heritage’s terminal on the river helps keep prices elevated in northeastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania.
“It drives the bid price up whether they’re selling to us or not,” Wince says. “Just by us having a terminal, we probably add five to 10 cents a bushel to farmers’ bottom line.”
In Columbiana County, the Ohio River is host to other private companies, some of which use barge transportation. Among these are S.H. Bell Co., East Liverpool Rail Terminal Co., TransMontaigne Partners LLC, D.W. Dickey & Son, Seaforth Mineral & Ore Co. Inc., Parsons, Marathon Petroleum Corp., Quality Liquid Feeds, Paragon Integrated Services Group, Hilcorp Energy Co. and Cimbar Performance Materials.
Since 2022,, Columbiana County has been part of a new port district along the Ohio River that includes seven counties in Ohio and nine counties in West Virginia. The Mid-Ohio River Valley Port District is today the largest inland statistical port region in the United States when measured in total tonnage shipped. This 213-mile stretch of the river is home to 31,883 jobs and generates $9.5 billion in total economic activity, according to an Ohio Maritime Plan study commissioned in 2023.
Recognizing the Lake to River Potential
More businesses are beginning to realize opportunities along the Ohio River in Columbiana County, says Penny Traina, executive director of the Columbiana County Port Authority. These efforts can only be enhanced by the creation of Lake to River Economic Development, she adds, as agencies from Ashtabula to Wellsville are working on new strategies to market the logistics assets.
Shipping by barge, for example, is among the cheapest modes of transportation relative to tonnage, Traina says. “One 15-ton barge is equal to 1,050 large semi trucks,” she says, which in turn reduces the amount of highway traffic and greenhouse gas emissions. The capacity of a single barge is also the equivalent of 108 freight rail cars, she notes.
The challenge is to develop a strategy that incorporates and markets all three modes of transportation, and to coordinate a regional plan with stakeholders throughout Columbiana, Mahoning, Trumbull and Ashtabula counties that emphasizes these advantages.
“One of the concerns we’re working on is that a lot of our barges come in full but go out empty,” Traina says. “That’s not just a lake-to-river issue; that happens across the United States.” Columbiana County handles as much as two million tons of cargo per year, consisting of grain, petroleum, chemicals, ores, minerals and steel. Terminals along the river report their tonnage activity to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, she says.
“Each terminal has their own niche according to their book of business,” Traina says.
Traina is in regular contact with counterparts such as the Growth Partnership for Ashtabula County and the Ashtabula County Port Authority to better coordinate a strategy for the lake-to-river corridor.
“We started talking about three years ago,” Traina says. Among the opportunities shared by the Port of Ashtabula and the Columbiana County Port Authority, for example, is the soybean trade. “We’re looking at how to partner and make a connection,” she says. “Not just from the river and lake, but through rail and highway as well.”
Building business within the commodities markets could hold significant benefits for the region. “It will be hugely beneficial for economic development to connect the commodity dots and use the transportation system – water, rail and roadway – to increase the movement of these products,” Traina says.
The Columbiana Port Authority has been successful in securing funding through the state’s Maritime Assistance Program for improvements to privately owned terminals.
Under the program, a private terminal could secure a grant up to 50% of an improvement project’s cost if the company funds the balance. In 2020, the port authority was awarded $1.8 million and in 2022, it was awarded $1.2 million. The MAP grants elicited another $2.8 million in private investment, Traina says.
One of the companies, S.H. Bell, replaced its terminal crane and is now able to double its cargo movement along the Ohio River,.
Another opportunity is developing is the potential effect of the Shell polyethylene, or “cracker,” plant on the Ohio River near Monaca, Pa., less than 15 miles from East Liverpool. The chemicals plant converts ethane gas into polyethylene pellets, which form the basis of countless plastic products.
“We’re looking at potential business offshoots of that plant, and how we can lure companies that can use the byproduct,” Traina says.
An overall key to developing this is an aggressive marketing initiative, spearheaded by ideas such as the Ohio River Commission, which would oversee and promote private industrial and recreational development along the river, Traina says.
Legislation related to the ORC’s formation was signed into law this month by Gov. Mike DeWine.
“I think we’ve done a great job in recognizing one of our biggest assets, the Ohio River,” Traina says, “and recognizing that we want to connect with our partners in the four-county region, taking us all the way to the lake.”