In message , at 22:18:12 on Sat, 29 Feb 2020,
John Levine remarked:
In article ,
Roland Perry wrote:
Apart from it being 1,500 miles from the Atlantic? What's the biggest
container ship you can get that far.

The limit is 225m long, 23.8m wide, draft 8 m, height above water
35.5m, capacity up to 30,000 tonnes. Why do you ask?

Because the most efficient way to ship stuff by sea (even in smallish
consignments that might otherwise fit inside a plane) is to bung it onto
a large container vessel (inside a container, obviously). Sounds like
transhipping it onto a much smaller boat to do the final 1,500miles is
going to be a pain, compared to air-freighting it end to end.

30,000 tonnes is small?

Big container ships are typically 200,000 tonnes.

I am reasonably sure that the ships that transit the St Lawrence to and
from the Great Lakes continue on to ports all over the world. It's not
like they unload in Halifax.

Wonkypedia says "mostly of inbound steel and outbound grain" and I think
we can agree neither of those are susceptible to air freight (or indeed
very urgent).
--
Roland Perry