Inland towing is the quiet giant of American maritime work. The country's river system moves more freight by tonnage than any other mode of transportation except pipeline — grain down the Mississippi, petroleum up and down the Ohio, chemicals along the Intracoastal — and it's moved by a workforce of inland mariners whose injuries rarely make headlines and whose cases are too often handled by lawyers who don't understand the work.

The Jones Act applies to all of it. A tankerman on a petroleum barge is a seaman. A deckhand on a line-haul tow pushing 40 barges down the Mississippi is a seaman. A mate on a harbor shift tug in St. Louis is a seaman. The law is the same. The injury patterns are different, the case values are somewhat different, but the four rights — maintenance, cure, unearned wages, and negligence damages — apply in full.

Who's covered: vessels and roles.

Line-haul towboats. The big river pushers running grain and petroleum along the Mississippi and Ohio. Crews of 8-10: captain, pilot, mate, chief engineer, engineer, deckhands, cook, tankerman.

Harbor and fleeting tugs. Shift work moving barges around river ports, making up tows, assisting other vessels. Smaller crews, more high-frequency traffic, more close-quarters injury risk.

Tank barges and dry cargo barges. The barges themselves aren't usually crewed, but tankermen who load, unload, and monitor them are seamen assigned to their tow.

Intracoastal Waterway crews. The ICW runs 3,000 miles from Texas to Maine and sees thousands of commercial tows. Crews work for weeks at a time and are fully covered.

How inland injuries happen.

  • Line-handling injuriesMooring lines, tow wires, ratchets, cheater pipes. Crushed hands, amputations, back injuries, line-recoil trauma. Inland tow wiring is among the most dangerous rigging work in maritime.
  • Slips and falls on bargesWet steel decks, icy conditions in winter, climbing between barges in a tow. "Walking the tow" is routine work and routinely injurious.
  • Fleeting & couplingMaking and breaking tows, setting wires, handling bits and timberheads. Pinch-point injuries, crushed fingers, back strains from the physical work of making up tows.
  • Tankerman exposuresPetroleum, chemicals, benzene. Acute and chronic exposure claims. Long-tail cancer and respiratory claims years later.
  • Overboard eventsMan-overboard incidents on rivers are often fatal — current, cold water, limited visibility. Survivors often have serious cold-water and secondary injuries.
  • Engine room and machinerySteam burns, high-temperature surface contact, caught-in machinery, fumes. Engineers and deckhands assisting in the engine room.

What your case is worth.

Inland cases produce somewhat lower median values than offshore or commercial-fishing cases, for three reasons: wages are lower (a deckhand on a river tow makes $55,000-$85,000 a year, versus $120,000+ offshore), vessels are less complex (fewer unseaworthiness theories), and venue is often less favorable (inland cases tend to be tried in Southern federal districts with slightly more conservative juries).

That said, serious inland cases still regularly produce seven-figure recoveries:

Soft-tissue, returned to work: $80,000-$180,000.

Surgical, back to work: $200,000-$450,000.

Surgical, career-ending: $500,000-$1.2M.

Catastrophic: $1M-$4M+.

What to do right now.

Know that you're a seaman. This is the most common piece of misinformation inland mariners hear — that the Jones Act doesn't apply to river work, or that harbor tug crews aren't seamen. Both claims are wrong.

Report and document. Write your own account of the incident and give a copy to someone you trust ashore. Take photos. Note witnesses by name.

Don't let the company doctor rush you back to work. Inland companies are particularly aggressive about MMI findings — trying to cut maintenance and cure before the injury has actually healed. Get a second opinion from your own doctor.

Hold the company to the unearned wages. On a 28/14 rotation, the unearned wages for the remainder of your hitch can add $8,000-$15,000 to the claim, separate from everything else. Don't let the adjuster close the file without paying it.