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Shipping in the age of COVID-19

How a Mississippi barge business is navigating the coronavirus outbreak.

A tug pushes a barge down the Mississippi River through St. Paul, Minnesota.
A tug pushes a barge down the Mississippi River through St. Paul, Minnesota.
Karen Bleier/AFP via Getty Images

While many of us are staying inside to curb the COVID-19 outbreak, some people are are still heading to work, to supply the economy with essential products. For many barge workers shipping products along America’s waterways, dangerous conditions can arise on the job even without an global pandemic.

Austin Golding is the president of Golding Barge in Vicksburg, Mississippi. He spoke with “Marketplace” host Kai Ryssdal about how his barge crews are navigating the coronavirus outbreak.

“The good news is while the guys are on the boat, they’re isolated,” Golding said. “The bad news is they can’t stay out there forever. So we have to have people come and go, and they know that they’re carrying a lot of the products that are going towards the fight against this virus.”

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