Boatnerd Discussion Forum

Jason, I think you nailed it. In 2005/6 when the ditch boats started making regular appearances on western Lake Superior, it was because demand for all Great Lakes cargoes was high and companies were using their boats wherever they could. On top of that companies like ASC might have been losing short haul kind of business to upstarts like LLT and K&K. In 2007/early 2008 the construction business was slumping but high global demand for iron ore was buoying activity at regional mines, so there weren't as many short-haul aggregate cargoes to carry so the ditch boats stayed on longer iron ore runs.

I think the same is true today. Local construction activity around the lakes is likely way down, but the global iron/steel industry is doing relatively fine. ASC has laid up their remaining steamers (which traditionally did a lot of Silver Bay type runs) so the company is using their more efficient diesel-powered boats where they're needed. There just isn't enough cargo demand these days to necessitate a bunch of ditch boats doing lots of short-haul lower lakes trips.

It just seems to be a little inefficient. I know those little boats would haul as much as a footer would in a year because we would put 4 or 5 and sometimes more cargos on in a week whereas a footer only hauls 1 a week. Is it the lack of construction aggregate? I suppose if you have all your footers busy and the only option is to run the smaller boats on open lake runs or use the steamers then it makes sense. I just remember we would do things like load in port inland, travel down to St Joe to unload, then across the lake to kcbx to load coal for green bay, then back to port inland for stone to saginaw then up to tawas for gypsum for lorain then sandusky for coal to marysville, then stoneport for stone to saginaw again, then tawas for gypsum for waukegan back to kcbx for coal for green bay etc. This would take about 2 weeks and we would have about 8 loads on the boat.

At 26' draft the ditch boats can haul about as much cargo per trip as boats like the Courtney Burton, Buckeye, and Hoyt, and those steamers used to do ore runs from Lake Superior to lower lakes ports all the time.

No idea about Whiskey Island currently, but the ditch boats started making regular calls to Silver Bay and other western Lake Superior ports in 2005/2006 and have been doing it ever since. I believe the usual run for them has been to take a full load out of Silver Bay, stop and lighter a few thousand tons at Whiskey, then continue up to the steel mill at whatever a typical Cuyahoga draft is these days (19' - 21'?)

I notice on the Duluth Shipping News page that the American Steamship ditch boats (Laud, Buffalo, Republic) are doing open lake runs to Silver Bay. Is the transfer of cargo at the Cleveland waterfront all done? Is Whiskey Island shut down? I know they started this spring with the footers bringing ore to the lakefront docks and starting up the shuttle runs. It seems inefficient for those small boats to haul only 2 loads a week. I know when I sailed on them it was very rare we were underway for more than 24 hours.