Juggling the variables

Editor's note:
This article on Ceres Terminals Inc. is the first of two stories on the stevedore companies of Duluth-Superior.
Chuck Ilenda has been in this stevedoring business plenty long enough to know exactly what he's doing — and he does. But ask him to describe just exactly what a stevedore does and he hesitates.

Chuck Ilenda — Ceres Terminals operations manager.

"Well," he concludes after discussing his work for a while, "you could say that I'm a facilitator."

Or you could say, contrary to popular misconception, that he is not a dock worker or a longshoreman. As Davis Helberg, former port director in Duluth-Superior, wrote not long ago in this publication: "A `stevedore,' in maritime vernacular, is a company (or its management personnel) employed to supervise and direct a vessel's loading or unloading. Put another way, stevedores are not longshoremen — indeed, they hire the longshoremen who do the physical labor."

Mr. Ilenda is the operations manager in Duluth-Superior for Ceres Terminals Inc., now owned by NYK Line, a Tokyo corporation. Ceres's business in the Twin Ports is almost exclusively grain stevedoring, primarily wheat or soybeans in recent years. In all his years, and thousands of ships, he has loaded only one saltwater vessel with something other than an ag product. (The cargo was coal.)

In the Twin Ports, Ceres is the stevedore for nearly all of the salt water vessels that call here and supervises 90 to 95 percent of the grain loads taken on by salties. Mr. Ilenda is personally involved with the unloading/loading of each and every one of those vessels in Ceres's care — 253 of them in his busiest season (1973), fewer in slower seasons (118 last year).

The maritime industry does not have loading and unloading grain ships down to a science. The job throws many variables into process — for example: the dimensions and design of a ship, its stability and tendencies with different cargo stowage arrangements, the amount of fuel on board, the locations and configurations of its holds and hatch covers, how it matches up with loading and unloading equipment at the docks or elevators, the widely differing weights and volume measurements of various commodities. Grain of different types or grades must be separated, either by holds or within the holds. Some ships must keep adequate space available for top-off cargoes at St. Lawrence River ports. Some ships have more than one discharge port and cargo must be stowed accordingly. Meanwhile, both shipper and ship owner want to load the maximum amount of cargo — but in the Great Lakes, a ship's draft is regulated by lock and channel depths.

You'd think that all these variables would have been downloaded over the years into a computer program for use by stevedores around the world, but Mr. Ilenda points to a shelf full of ring binders within reach of his desk and says, "This is my computer."

The binders contain data and diagrams of all the classes of ships, and many of the specific vessels, that have ever called on the Twin Ports or that someday might call here. He also has diagrams for all the Port's elevators. With all his diagrams in place, he can tell a ship's officers exactly where to position their vessel for loading or unloading.

Keep in mind that these are global travelers and that an oceangoer's call in Duluth-Superior might be the first and last trip ever into Port for that vessel and its officers. When he is advised that a ship is scheduled, Mr. Ilenda flips through the pages of his "computer" and looks up the vessel or its class and deploys his to-scale, two-dimensional diagrams to begin sketching out his plan for loading the ship. In addition to his computer-in-a-binder, he also has the computer between his ears that is loaded with more than 30 years of experience.

When he hears from others who are involved in the process — especially the ship's local agent — and learns specifics about the arrival time and the exact nature of its cargo, he can contact the ILA local and hire the gang that will do the actual dockside and shipboard labor. He is in frequent contact with the ship's captain and officers. The cell phone is his constant companion as he and others coordinate the many jobs that will have to be accomplished to get the vessel into and out of Port safely and efficiently.

During the actual loading of the vessel, Mr. Ilenda will be out of his office and right there aboard ship or at dockside, making sure, along with the watchful eyes of others, that the ship is maintained in proper trim and draft during — and after — its loading. Getting the ship approved for loading, getting its business done and getting it back on its way is not a process of discrete tasks completed in isolation. It's a process that requires a coordinator, a facilitator — a stevedore.

This particular stevedore — Charles A., or "Chuck" or "Charlie," Ilenda hails from neighboring Proctor, Minn. After completing high school, he attended the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, earning a degree in marine transportation and then launching a maritime career. He sailed the oceans for a few years as a second mate, working aboard vessels that called on Northern European, East African and Far East ports. When the Ceres post in Duluth-Superior opened up in the early 1970s, he applied for and won the position. He's been on the job ever since, on call 24/7, year-round. ("Haven't taken a summer vacation in 30 years," he says.)

And now you know exactly what a stevedore is: It's a brain-powered computer loaded with information, insight and savvy specific to its home port, and it never goes down.