Boatnerd Discussion Forum

Most likely American Century is cleaning up the last of the coal before they close it next month.

Noticed on the schedule and lineup for the MERC Coal Dock, they’re showing the American Century loading “two coal cargoes for DTE!” Subject to change of course, their first load is May 25 for St. Clair & Monroe while the 2nd load is on June 2nd and that is a “straight load” for DTE at St. Clair. Surprised to see that they are loading coal for the DTE plants since there hasn’t been any loads so far this season going to DTE at St. Clair & Monroe. I wonder then if these are the only ones for DTE at St. Clair & Monroe or if they’ll be anymore then?

Here's a pdf document from Duluth Port discussing the MERC, and the western coal boom, with its impact on Duluth/Superior.

https://duluthport.com/wp-content/uploa ... l_Boom.pdf

I will have to look at some of my old shipping journals from the 1970s, but I thought that one time a taconite loading apparatus was considered for the MERC site. I cannot remember if this was before the coal dock was designed or was part of the original proposal.

I first thought that the loading equipment may not be robust enough to handle the heavier weight of taconite ore pellets.
Also If it were the first of April we might get a lot of posts of diverse uses for the facility...

Iron ore pellets are a much more dense material than coal; word is that in order for the erstwhile MERC facility to be able to handle iron ore pellets, the facilities conveyor belt systems and materials handling equipment would likely require a significant amount of rebuilding/upgrading/parts replacement.

What is possibly the facility’s most unique and valuable asset at this point would be its rather large rail loop, which enables long trains (100+ cars) to pass through and be handled continuously, without breaking up the train into shorter strings of cars. That sort of thing is all the rage in most modern grain-handling terminals or other dry bulk-handling facilities these days. Utilizing that rail loop to serve the neighboring grain elevators (or a new one) could be a game changer in Duluth-Superior’s increasingly weak grain throughput despite the geographical advantage the Twin Port’s location should theoretically give it in the grain trade. Similarly, that rail loop (and the deepwater dock connected to it) could be enough at some point to coax someone into investing the resources into converting the facility’s conveyor/materials handling systems to handle iron ore pellets or some other dry bulk commodity(-ies).

Regarding backlogs of ships and job creation: It’s worth remembering that in an economy like ours, where utmost priority goes to maximizing profit margin, i.e. being able to extract the most cash possible out of a business at regular intervals, things like long queues of ships waiting to load at a dock are a feature of the way business is done, not a “bug" so to speak. In the regional iron ore pellet business, loading ships in a timely manner often takes extra effort, extra staffing, and therefore extra expenditure, and all of that may run in direct opposition to “cost-cutting” -oriented priorities and decision-making. How much the aforementioned phenomena actually affects Lake Superior iron ore pellet loading times/backlogs probably varies from dock company to dock company, from facility to facility, and from day-to-day at any one given loading dock.

A backlog of ships waiting to load at a dock may be cause for concern for the shipping companies, but it may not be much of a concern to the company leadership at, say, a multinational or trans-continental railroad that happens to own and operate an iron ore pellet rail line / loading dock. The only way that situation would change is if there was more competition in the market, but the iron ore pellet railroading business in northern Minnesota (and indeed, railroading anywhere) has a very high barrier to entry in terms of initial capital outlay, i.e. if a new entity wanted to compete with the existing ones, and advertise fast ship loading times and backlog-minimization as one of its main strengths, it would have to come to the table with billions of dollars to either buy rail lines and dock facilities or build them from scratch. It would also have to develop political relationships with local communities for any new or revived rail lines, and would have to be able to successfully pursue business relationships with local iron ore pellet miners/manufacturers.

In the same way, job creation might be something an outside observer would see as a positive, but adding staffing to an operation often runs in opposition to most modern-day profit-oriented companies’ tendency to be laser focused on minimizing how much money they spend on labor. For a highly visible case study in that phenomenon, see how considerable staffing reductions on Great Lakes ships over the past 3 decades, especially on the U.S. side, has affected the way those ships are maintained and operated. In the 1990s a typical thousand footer still may have had a crew of around 30, now crew sizes on those same ships are down under 20 people in many cases.

Not enough demand to justify that. Especially when both BN and CN have large stock piles close to their docks

The merc coal dock is set to close next month, there is only a small amount of coal in a pile left there. The mayor of superior had mentioned a few months ago that they would like to utilize that facility for something else. Why couldn’t they stockpile ore there and load the ships with the equipment that’s already there? I know that there is already the bnsf dock in superior but I think it would help eliminate the backlog of ships that always occurs at certain times of the year. It would create jobs as well.