100 Tonnes of Steel Wire. A Port With No Road In.
About This Project
How AGF Shipping moved a 100-tonne cable reel from a UK manufacturer to an oil & gas supply base that standard freight routes can’t actually reach.
The Brief
A UK manufacturer needed a 100-metric-tonne reel of steel wire delivered to Port Fourchon, Louisiana — the primary supply base for offshore oil & gas operations in the Gulf of Mexico.
The reel itself was straightforward out-of-gauge cargo. Getting it to its actual destination wasn’t.
The Problem
Port Fourchon isn’t a serviced port — it’s a supply base with no direct ocean freight service of its own. The nearest real seaport is New Orleans, roughly 60 miles away by road.
That road isn’t built for cargo like this. The route from New Orleans to Port Fourchon runs almost entirely through Louisiana bayou, on roads raised on stilts to stay above water level — which caps what can be transported over them by weight. A 100-tonne reel wasn’t going to make that journey by truck.
The Plan
We built the route around the constraint rather than trying to force cargo through it:
– Collected the reel from the manufacturer’s site in the North East of England by specialist haulage
– Moved it via our own feeder service (Aberdeen–Hull–London–Antwerp) to Antwerp, handling all UK/Belgian customs formalities and AMS entry along the way
– Our Antwerp team supervised the transfer onto the mother vessel for the Atlantic crossing to New Orleans
– Rather than attempt the restricted bayou road route, we arranged a barge to meet the mother vessel directly in New Orleans, discharging the reel straight from ship to barge
– The barge delivered the reel directly to the consignee’s berth at the Port Fourchon supply base — bypassing the road bottleneck entirely
The Outcome
The reel arrived at Port Fourchon the same day it was discharged in New Orleans, without ever touching the restricted road network — a route built specifically around a destination that doesn’t have a conventional one.
Why This Matters to You
Some destinations don’t come with a standard freight route — supply bases, remote sites, and locations with genuine physical access constraints need a plan built around the destination, not a generic booking forced to fit it. This is the kind of routing problem AGF solves as a matter of course, not an exception.