| The Port of Portland, like most major West Coast ports, handles a variety of cargo and transportation modes. Aside from trans-Pacific and coastal cargo, the port also handles a considerable amount of barged commodities at its Terminal 6 facility, arriving from the nearby Columbia/Snake river system. In fact, the growing trend at the terminal has been handling container on barge (COB) traffic. For both the month of December and calendar year 1999, record volumes were posted in terms of ocean shipping containers loaded and discharged by barge. The port claims there have been as many as ten barges with boxes calling on any given day.
There were 5,270 barged containers in and out of Terminal 6 in December 1999 compared to 3,815 in December 1998 (a 38 percent increase), and 45,661 barged containers for all of 1999 compared to 39,709 during 1998 (a 15 percent increase).
Currently, more than 20 percent of export containers being loaded onto ships at Terminal 6 arrive by barge, while 15 percent come by rail and the rest by truck. Just three years ago, only about 10 percent of the Port's containerized exports were received by barge.
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