^ yeah, the new locks on the panama canal now allow for ships up to 1,200' long, so new panamax is the standard that a lot of commercial ships around the world are built to these days. Before the new locks were completed in 2016, the old panamax standard was 950' for ship length.
The US army corp of engineers is currently rebuilding the outdated davis and sabin locks at Sault Ste. Marie into a single lock that will match the size of the existing Poe lock (the only one that can currently accommodate the 1,000 footers), and after that work is done, I can't imagine that we'll ever see larger locks at the Soo in any of our lifetimes, so the 1,000 footers are more or less the largest ships we'll ever see ply the waters of these magnificent inland freshwater seas.
Which is just fine, because a 1,000' long ship is still a pretty damn big ship. I mean, that's roughly 270' longer than than detroit's ren cen is tall.
Source:
https://dalefishergalleries.com/prod...ver-freighter/