Port of Monroe completes dynamic RORO project rooted in history
This fall, the Port of Monroe worked in collaboration with many partners across different transportation concentrations to move high-value cargo across the Great Lakes. The components were for a data center project development in the Greater Toronto area. The units were fabricated in Texas, trucked to Monroe, rolled on to barges, and delivered to Hamilton, ON for the Ascent TOR-1 data center project. The marine carrier was McKeil Marine, which utilized three different barges and five different tugboats (Ecosse, Vigilant I, Lois M., Molly M I) throughout the course of the project. Additional support was provided by Ashton Marine. Over-the-road trucking partner was Scott-Woods Transport Inc. of Ontario with additional support from JNB, Pioneer Heavy Haul, RLE, Bulldog, and Barnhart. In sum, this project produced 20 new vessel calls to the Port of Monroe during the 2025/26 shipping season.
The project cargo wins celebrated at the Port of Monroe in fall 2025 is also the evolution of the Port’s partnership with McKeil Marine, and the continuation of a service that began in 1991 in the Detroit-Windsor truck ferry. The truck ferry was a solution that leveraged the marine mode to serve a logistical niche in the Great Lakes region, providing a link across the Detroit River for cargo that could not travel over the regional bridge crossings. Gregg Ward and his father John started the truck ferry service in 1991 and it grew to become one of the longest-standing models of short sea shipping on the Great Lakes. Ward, who serves as the Port’s International Trade Specialist, wound down the service in 2023, but the logistics needs for oversized cargo still exists. For the project, the Port repurposed the truck ferry’s old logo and adopted it for a new identifying mark: “Mon-RORO”
