Great lake boats, a good video

[MossRoad]

Slag is commonly used as an aggregate for road beds if it is a combination of 1" down to fines. Specific sizes are used to replace similar sized gravel in some applications. The slag is primarily limestone and impurities from the blast furnaces.
Back in the 70s, I hauled many loads out of The Levy Company, next door to Bethlehem Steel in Gary. In fact, the base for my driveway is #53 slag I picked up there.

Edit: Here's a picture of my dad on a TD15 pushing slag that we kept stockpiled in our yard. The slag was a gray color, if it doesn't come across in the picture.

View attachment 3217805

I got mine from Levy back in the early 90's.

 

[MossRoad]

3/30 - PERE MARQUETTE 41 & UNDAUNTED arrived at Manistee MI at 0158 this morning, marking the first arrival of the 2025 shipping season. The pair delivered slag from Burns Harbor, IN to the Rieth-Riley dock. They intend to remain in town until Monday evening, due to weather. What would they do with slag?View attachment 3216362

Manistee still has a roundhouse!

 

[BravoXray]

I got mine from Levy back in the early 90's.

Loading at Levy was pretty neat, you scaled in empty, pulled to a call box told the operator who you were loading for, what kind of material you wanted and how much. Then you pulled under line of silos to a loading chute, a conveyor belt that ran under them was started, and as it traveled under each silo with different size material, the gate would open and drop the proper amount of that on to the belt, When it reached the end, it was dropped into your trailer and was mixed up in the process. The operator would sound a horn when you needed to start moving forward. After loading there a couple of times, you could gauge the speed you needed to move forward so as to get the load properly distributed. It was computer controlled, and dropped just the tonnage you wanted, usually within a few hundred pounds, which was verified when you scaled out and picked up your weigh ticket, that was sent to the scalehouse via pneumatic tube. Pretty cool stuff back in the 70s.

 

[ArlyA]

Patagonman downbound at the West Pier of the Soo Locks MI. They are headed for Milwaukee. 3-29-25

 

[ArlyA]

How do you load a really big boat fast?? The Gott at BNSF, who does load ore here a just a few times per season. Superior, WI - April 7, 2025

 

[ArlyA]

The final Duluth-Superior winter resident Presque Isle (1973) departed port last Thursday with iron ore pellets bound for Cleveland, Ohio. Here, tug Helen H. (1967) helps them back into CN Dock 6 to top off the already 30,000 odd tons of iron ore pellets they loaded last January to help reduce stress on the coupling system while sitting for 2 months. Our recent snow storm was very apparent on the surrounding landscape that afternoon. Cleveland is a rare destination for the Presque Isle, but might be a more common destination for them this year with Cleveland-Cliffs' current requirements (April 3rd, 2025).

 

[Kyle_in_Tex]

Hopefully the economy will BOOM and we will need to quadruple steel output.

 

[ArlyA]

The Twin Ports saw its first ocean vessel arrival today, the Federal Yoshino but not the contest winner as the saltie spent the winter in Thunder Bay undergoing repairs (the first ship needs to be a full transit of the Seaway system in the current season). The vessel will be loading wheat at the Riverland elevator. Tug Missouri assisted today. Duluth, MN - April 8, 2025 Sure can see his front thruster working.

 

[ArlyA]

Hopefully the economy will BOOM and we will need to quadruple steel output.

Here is the trend. Not all that high.

 

[MossRoad]

In the week ending on April 5, 2025, domestic raw steel production was 1,656,000 net tons while the capability utilization rate was 74.4 percent.

Industry Data - American Iron and Steel Institute

AISI serves as the voice of the American steel industry in the public policy arena and advances the case for steel in the marketplace as the preferred material of choice.

www.steel.org

There's no way to quadruple it, or even double it, as we're only 25% away from maximum output now.

Sure is nice to watch the boats, though.