Junking footers?

[Guest]

Cort going out late and the Lee Tregurtha has a TBD fit out date

[Guest]

Does anyone know if any boats aren't fitting out this spring (including footers if any) ?

[Guest]

And not all footers are the same. Some are optimized for ore, others for coal. Some have been re-engined, others might burn more fuel or need to burn expensive low sulfur diesel.

Will there be a ripple effect, where mid-size boats that service deep water docks are pushed out of service by a now available footers?

And what happens to the few remaining steam boats who are getting harder to maintain, crew and burn way more fuel than diesels?

And will cheap used boats cause the Canadians to stop ordering so many new ones?

[Marc]

Very good discussion going on here.

Having sailed on 7 different footers over the course of my career, I can say the ASC footers are in the worst shape of all. The previous post about the Indiana Harbor having a bulkhead collapse in 2015 is correct.

[Guest]

I have in my records that Walter J. McCarthy departed Duluth on March 27, 2010 light, for Sturgeon Bay, where she arrived on March 29, 2010. The McCarthy departed Sturgeon Bay on May 12, 2010 after bulkhead renewal had been completed.

-Brian

[hausen]

when the indiana harbor loaded one hold of grain in the early 90s where did it discharge this grain cargo??

The Telescope, v. 42, n. 2 (Mar - Apr 1994), p. 45 indicates Indiana Harbor loaded one hold with oats at United Grain Growers Elevator A (now Viterra A) in Thunder Bay for delivery to Milwaukee, WI. On that same trip the rest of her cargo was iron ore pellets loaded at Taconite Harbor after she visited Thunder Bay, which she delivered to Indiana Harbor, IN.

[hausen]

Are you referring to the Indiana Harbor when it sat out most of the season?

Did some searching through the archives and my brief summary above fails to lay out the full details of the saga, which played out over 2-3 seasons. If I'm not mistaken, it seems as though Indiana Harbor suffered a sudden bulkhead collapse in spring 2015. That specific deficiency was repaired shortly thereafter and she returned to service for the rest of the season, spent 2016 in layup because she needed further similar work to pass her next 5-year survey, bounced from Duluth-Superior to Bayship and back to Duluth-Superior in pursuit of the completion of said work, and finally returned to service in late spring/early summer 2017.

There's also mention in one of thee threads linked below of a similar occurrence on the Walter J. McCarthy Jr in 2010, and someone even tosses the American Spirit into the mix, though I'm less familiar with how much of those mentions are rumor/mixed-up memory and how much might be more substantiated. The McCarthy showing her age in a similar way to the Indiana Harbor would certainly match up with the word going around the waterfront 20 years ago.

More in the following threads:

Footer Life Span

re: m/v indiana harbor

[badger]

when the indiana harbor loaded one hold of grain in the early 90s where did it discharge this grain cargo??

[Shipwatcher1]

The phrase some years ago referring to a few of the footers built by Bay Ship was that they were, "Thirty year throw away boats." Well, those Bay Ship footers have outlasted that moniker and continued to be productive.

Over 20 years ago people who were intimately familiar with one or two of those same Bay Ship footers were noting the condition of certain aspects of their internal structure, stating that outside observers would be surprised at the degree to which they were showing their age. More time has passed; it's not likely that any ship that was showing such signs back then is in significantly better condition now. One of those ships even experienced an instance where major structural deterioration came to light quite suddenly, and sat in layup during the better part of an entire shipping season until repairs were made.

In the past on the Great Lakes a company sold a large, 26-year-old ship in excellent condition for scrap when cargo demand fell; people who worked at IMS in Port Colborne have noted repeatedly that Arthur B. Homer was in immaculate shape when she went to scrap. An owning company sold a river-class self-unloader for scrap, despite its good condition, because they decided they weren't interested in running it or selling it to another fleet for a good price (American Fortitude). With those precedents in mind, it doesn't seem like scrap is necessarily off the table for a few thousand footers in the near future. The footers are or will be exceeding 50 years in age over the next 5-10 years, more or less twice the age that the Homer, Humphrey (2), and William Clay Ford (1) were when they were retired.

Are you referring to the Indiana Harbor when it sat out most of the season?

[hausen]

and what grain elevator is equiped to load a 105 foot wide 1,000 foot lake boat?ceretainly not chicago. too many flaws in your notion.

The options are certainly limited; many Duluth-Superior, Thunder Bay, or South Lake Michigan facilities would need, at bare minimum, some dredging work and loading rig modifications. Other facilities like the ones up the Calumet River at South Chicago as mentioned, are restricted by the channel size of the waterways they're positioned on and wouldn't be in consideration.

Indiana Harbor loaded a partial cargo of grain at an elevator in Thunder Bay in the early 1990s. If that elevator is still in service then there's at least one candidate facility at the Canadian Lakehead. Given the slip layout and loading spout arrangement of several other Thunder Bay elevators, I suspect that more than one of the might be able to accommodate a thousand footer.

The elevator at Connors Point (ex- Peavey, currently Gavilon, soon to be Viterra U.S.?) seems to be the only immediate candidate at Duluth-Superior; other Twin Ports elevators have loading berths down slips that are currently dredged too narrow or that are around corners that are too sharp to accommodate a thousand footer. Elevator A in Duluth has a nice long dock wall northeast of it where thousand-footer capable loading equipment could easily be built, (said property also seems to have plenty of potential space to allow for much-improved on-site railcar capacity/trackage) but that facility has been idle for nearly a decade and its current ownership status is not clear.

Seems like the Cargill elevator in Burns Harbor might be able to handle a thousand footer depending on the height clearance of its loading rig. COFCO's Milwaukee elevator appears to have the space to berth a thousand footer, but the question of whether the exact location along the dock face of its loading spouts would actually allow a footer to be fully loaded is best left to someone more familiar with the facility.

[guest]

and what grain elevator is equiped to load a 105 foot wide 1,000 foot lake boat?ceretainly not chicago.

[Guest 999]

Reflecting upon hausen's thoughts, it would be ironic if Buffalo once again became known for grain transshipment, as it was before the Welland Canal expanded in the 1930s. I realize the 'quick and dirty' method is direct transfer to ships heading east. I wonder if some rudimentary storage facilities might be in order, but owing to the size of the footers, you're not going to motor them up the Buffalo River, or Cuyahoga River in Cleveland to make use of long dormant elevators. New facilities, or an overland conveying system might be considered, but costs would be large. This is certainly a case of the tail wagging the dog just for the sake of keeping a few large boats in service. An interesting conjecture, however.

[Guest]

A lot of info here to digest-- thanks for those replies.

[hausen]

Another area that could be impacted is Russian wheat sales. With those sales now cut-off, it may allow increased movements of Canadian and US wheat into those countries who have put sanctions on Russia. Of course, wheat is not moved in thousand-footers.

Given the impending decline of coal tonnage, seems like it would be wise for U.S. Lakes shipping companies to explore future options for their thousand footers.

What follows is pure armchair speculation:

Wonder whether a thousand footer could find a competitive niche in loading grain at the farthest-inland ports on the Lakes, then bringing said grain to eastern Lake Erie where it could be transferred directly to oceangoing ships. For ocean fleet operators that have a ship that's finishing cargo unload at Cleveland, Buffalo, Ramey's Bend, Port Weller, or possibly even Hamilton, Toronto, or Oshawa, it could save them from having to spend the time/fuel/pilotage fees entailed in sailing light all the way from the lower Lakes to Thunder Bay, Duluth-Superior, or S. Lake Michigan to pick up a grain cargo.

This would require some modifications to the thousand footer to be able to handle grain and use its self-unloading boom to efficiently fill a saltie's holds. It would require good working relationships between the Lake fleet/operator, the ocean carrier, and the handful of grain terminals at the aforementioned ports that could actually handle loading a thousand-footer. It would also require an attitude of built-in schedule flexibility on the part of the company operating the thousand footer, since on each trip to Lake Erie the ship would likely be transferring cargo to multiple ocean ships, and may sometimes have to wait around for a few days in the event that the perfect timing doesn't work out re: when ocean ships finish unloading and become available to receive a grain transshipment.

If the aforementioned potential challenges proved reasonably surmountable, and if the hypothetical thousand footer employed in the grain transshipment trade had fuel efficient propulsion and perhaps could manage to slow-steam its way from the grain loading ports to the transshipment location, it could potentially move the grain 750 - 850 NM / 1,300km - 1,500km at very low freight rates, saving an ocean operator 2-3 round trips of twice that length each. Such an operation might prove well-suited to contracts that require around 45,000-60,000 metric tons of grain at a time; enough to fill or nearly fill a thousand footer, and to be the right amount to be transferred to 2-3 oceangoing bulk cargo ships of the size that frequent the Seaway/Lakes. I'm sure such a practice wouldn't be optimized for every instance of export grain, but with a round-trip time of roughly 2+ weeks it would only take a demand of a handful of such cargoes each year to keep a thousand footer busy through a significant part of the shipping season. It could work well for a ship that moves grain during periods of high demand and switches to working the iron ore pellet trade during lulls in grain movement.

This type of move has more or less already been carried out in high volumes with iron ore pellets that are bound for Quebec City and an additional transfer there to large ocean ships for export overseas. If I'm not mistaken, this hypothetical thousand footer grain transshipment practice wouldn't necessarily represent any additional handling steps for a grain cargo than already exist along the trade route of moving grain on 740' lakers from western Lakes ports to St. Lawrence River terminals for for transshipment to oceangoing vessels.

In most shipping seasons, a significant number of oceangoing ships leave the Lakes/Seaway in ballast after delivering cargoes. This was especially prevalent last autumn (2021), when some ocean ships were leaving Lakes ports without cargo and sailing empty all the way to Brazil to load more steel products to bring back to the Lakes. Perhaps a well orchestrated operation involving a thousand footer offering grain load-outs on Lake Erie would offer just enough of a time, fuel, and fee saver to induce ships in to leave the Lakes with cargo vs. in ballast.

Perhaps such a trade might not have been that attractive or necessary in the past. There are, however, several emergent and increasingly prevalent external factors that could render the Lakes/Seaway a more lucrative outlet for export grain than it has been over the past 20 years, especially on the U.S. side. The multi-faceted weather chaos in the Pacific Northwest / Southern B.C. over the past year revealed the precarious nature of rail linkages between the western interior of the continent and western coastal ports, and signs only point to more potential for such disruptions in the coming year. There's also precedent for weather events disrupting the grain trade at the outlet of the Mississippi River; the drought and extreme low water levels in the late 1980s stranded Mississippi River barge tows and lead to more export grain moveing through U.S. lake ports instead. A similar disruption and re-routing of business happened at a smaller scale in the months after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. This past August (2021), Hurricane Ida did significant damage to several grain export facilities in the same region. In the coming decades such extreme weather disruptions are likely to become more common in that region as well. The Great Lakes offer a relatively stable and presently under-utilized alternative for grain movement. The Canadian side of the Lakes has already experienced a resurgence in the grain trade, starting around 8 years ago. U.S. Lakes ports and shipping operators might find it worthwhile to use the inherent advantages that the Lakes offer in the coming decades to pursue and encourage competitiveness in the grain trade in a similar way, especially in light of future factors that would highlight Lakes grain trade advantages (rising fuel costs, coastal weather disruptions). Perhaps thousand footers looking for work in light of declining coal tonnage could play a role in that.

Alternately, or additionally, if such a trade promised to be feasible, it could be the factor that finally tips the scales in favor of a Canadian fleet purchasing/operating a thousand foot ship. A Canadian-owned thousand footer could shuttle both grain and iron ore pellets to Lake Erie for transfer out the Welland/Seaway, as well as delivering iron ore pellets to Nanticoke or to the site of hypothetical future HBI type plants on the Canadian side of the lakes.

[Guest]

I believe that recent Geopolitical events in Ukraine may, and I use may, have an impact on Great Lakes shipping in the coming months and years, though it's hard to gauge so early in the conflict.

Both Ukraine and Russia supply 25% of imported steel into the EU countries, and with Ukraine steel mills shut down and Russian steel makers cutoff to the vast majority of foreign markets, it may allow steel makers in the US and Canada to make up the shortfall in the EU.

Another area that could be impacted is Russian wheat sales. With those sales now cut-off, it may allow increased movements of Canadian and US wheat into those countries who have put sanctions on Russia. Of course, wheat is not moved in thousand-footers.

On the other hand, the steel tariffs that were put in place by the previous administration, geopolitics will now play an even bigger role in determining if the steel tariffs are kept, or are bargained away as a way to reach agreements with other countries for support in the Ukraine-Russian conflict.

Finally we come to the HBI plant in Toledo. Much of the briquet iron consumed in the US come from Brazil, Venezuela, Ukraine and Russia. With the later two now out of the picture, at least for now, EAF operators in the US may realize the benefit of getting their HBI from Toledo.

- Brian

[hausen]

The phrase some years ago referring to a few of the footers built by Bay Ship was that they were, "Thirty year throw away boats." Well, those Bay Ship footers have outlasted that moniker and continued to be productive.

Over 20 years ago people who were intimately familiar with one or two of those same Bay Ship footers were noting the condition of certain aspects of their internal structure, stating that outside observers would be surprised at the degree to which they were showing their age. More time has passed; it's not likely that any ship that was showing such signs back then is in significantly better condition now. One of those ships even experienced an instance where major structural deterioration came to light quite suddenly, and sat in layup during the better part of an entire shipping season until repairs were made.

In the past on the Great Lakes a company sold a large, 26-year-old ship in excellent condition for scrap when cargo demand fell; people who worked at IMS in Port Colborne have noted repeatedly that Arthur B. Homer was in immaculate shape when she went to scrap. An owning company sold a river-class self-unloader for scrap, despite its good condition, because they decided they weren't interested in running it or selling it to another fleet for a good price (American Fortitude). With those precedents in mind, it doesn't seem like scrap is necessarily off the table for a few thousand footers in the near future. The footers are or will be exceeding 50 years in age over the next 5-10 years, more or less twice the age that the Homer, Humphrey (2), and William Clay Ford (1) were when they were retired.

[Scott]

The phrase some years ago referring to a few of the footers built by Bay Ship was that they were, "Thirty year throw away boats." Well, those Bay Ship footers have outlasted that moniker and continued to be productive. I agree that lack of cargoes could sideline a few of the current footers, but as far as scrapping? I don't agree with that scenario. I recall the shipping strike of the late 70's or 80's and seeing all the ships on the wall. I don't think we're in that deep of trouble. The economy cycles, and sooner or later, steel will once again be in more demand. Just my take.

[Guest]

So it seems that maybe all of the 1000 footers won't be needed in the future, and I get that their length makes them unusable for many places, but couldn't they just cut a few of them down like they did the Frazer? Would the extra width be a deal killer?

Bonus- if you did 2 or 3 of these, you could make a nice barge with the cutouts!

With the decline in western coal and shuttering of blast furnaces around the Great Lakes, there has certainly been discussion in recent years regarding the future viability of 1,000-footers. Most of what I say here is based on previous conversations I've had on this discussion board.

First of all, with the impending loss of tonnage around the Lakes, I agree with you that not all 13 of the 1,000-footers will be needed within the next decade or so. While the ability to efficiently haul large tonnages is their strength, the footers - as you pointed out - are restricted to certain regions by their size. If the amount of cargo carried along these trade routes is downsized, there simply won't be enough to go around for all these vessels (especially with the expected elimination of coal in its entirety over the next 10 years). Recent construction projects on the American side have all been smaller vessels/tug-barge combinations that carry less and are more versatile for customers at a variety of ports. This is clearly the future that shipowners envision, so the demand for massive cargoes supported by today's fleet of footers will likely be on the decline in years to come. There is also speculative talk about American vessels exporting ore and other cargoes through the Welland Canal and out the St. Lawrence Seaway, which 1,000-footers are not able to partake in due to their size. That being said, things can change, so if HBI or other minimill-related cargoes take off in the Great Lakes region, this tonnage could offset some of what is lost from the elimination of coal and dwindling blast furnaces. The loss of the St. Clair and potential scrapping of the Roger Blough leave some tonnage to be desired, though several ships have been at the wall in recent years even with these absences.

Sadly, this means that unless things change, we will likely see the first 1,000-footer(s) scrapped or idled indefinitely within the next decade or so. Speculation by some is that a few of the ASC footers might be at the most risk for being the first casualty. While seeing these vessels go would be sad, it stands to reason that some footers will definitely be sailing the Lakes for quite some time. As they are the most cost-effective vessels available today, shipowners will want to keep around as many as demand allows for - tonnages would have to crash drastically for no footers to be needed. Companies seem to agree, as recent repowerings of the Paul R. Tregurtha and Edwin H. Gott and installation of gas scrubbers on some Interlake footers indicate an investment in some of these behemoths for years to come. Some of the footers are said to be "built like a tank" and freshwater significantly increases a vessel's lifespan, so many of these vessels can last for quite some time in a structural sense.

As far as cutting down footers and/or converting some to barges, the common consensus is that this is unlikely to happen. Length, width, and depth (as hausen mentioned) all hinder their versatility, and limitations on 1,000-footers will persist as long as the width and depth factors are at play. Shortening a footer would also significantly decrease its carrying capacity and thus its overall efficiency, which is its primary advantage to begin with. As much as I am intrigued with your idea of frankensteining a barge with footer sections, I think it's likely that these vessels would be scrapped before being shortened. Who knows what the future will bring, though. Again, this is all speculation by enthusiasts and sailors based on our understanding of the industry and the various economic factors at play.

I know I touched on more topics than you brought up in your original post, but felt that some additional context is helpful for understanding where the future of 1,000-footers is headed. The bottom line is we will likely lose some this decade, but I feel those that are especially well-maintained could sail for years to come.

[hausen]

So it seems that maybe all of the 1000 footers won't be needed in the future, and I get that their length makes them unusable for many places, but couldn't they just cut a few of them down like they did the Frazer? Would the extra width be a deal killer?

Bonus- if you did 2 or 3 of these, you could make a nice barge with the cutouts!

I think you're onto something when you bring up width being a deal-breaker. Additionally most thousand footers have rather deep hulls. The combination of 105' width and 50' or 56' hull depth would render a shortened ex-thousand footer a lot of trouble to use at many of the docks / channels that shorter Great Lakes freighters currently specialize in.

A hypothetically shortened thousand footer that retained its 105' width would also be less fuel efficient than it would have been in its original longer hull form. In the coming decades fuel efficiency is going to be of the utmost influence on the shape of the shipping industry and the shape of its ships.

[Jared]

I always imagined then cutting the Cort down and her looking like the Sarah Spencer. We will see what occurs to the St. Clair at Port Colburn on the aft decked footers.