A day in the life of Chuck Ilenda

Chuck Ilenda, manager of Duluth-Superior grain stevedoring operations for Ceres Terminals, Inc., is responsible for hiring longshore gangs and directing the loading of more than 90 percent of grain vessels in Duluth-Superior, the Great Lakes’ largest tonnage port. Here he has a conversation with retired Duluth Port Director Davis Helberg about the challenges a grain stevedore faces in a typical day:

Helberg: The general public and the non-trade news media tend to confuse the role of a stevedore with that of a longshoreman or dock worker. How do you make the distinction?

Ilenda: It depends on where you are. I did my cadet training on the West Coast, and out there they use the term stevedore to mean a longshoreman. But here on the Great Lakes and on the East and Gulf coasts, the stevedore is the employer, and the longshoreman is the employee.

The word “stevedore” comes from Spanish and, roughly translated, means “to carry.” Sometimes, I guess, in more ways than one. A stevedore is the link, the intermediary, between the principal and the labor.

Helberg: Let’s create a scenario where we go through a typical day in the working life of Chuck Ilenda. Let’s say you have three ships in port — one just starting to load, another nearly loaded and a third just arriving for inspection at the anchorage. Start from the time you get up in the morning.

Ilenda: Normally, my get-up time is between 3:30 and 4 a.m., and it has been for many years. It doesn’t seem to matter what time I go to bed, whether its 9 o’clock or 10 or 11, I’m up early. I imagine a lot of it has to do with thinking, “What am I going to do today, and how am I going to do it?”

If I’ve got three ships and one to be inspected, I try to arrange the vessel agent to put off the inspection to, say, 9 a.m. I would first go over to the ship that’s finishing, and I’ll read the drafts to see just where I’m at, how much I’ve got to go, how I’m going to take care of it.

Then I’ll run over to the ship that’s starting and get that one going, or maybe just talk with my foreman and tell him what I need, and then go back to the one that’s finishing. That’s the most critical one.

Don’t get me wrong — the inspection is important and the startup is important because you want to have a good loading plan. But normally, I take care of that two or three days ahead of time. As far as I’m concerned, before a ship is even started, I’m done. Really. I mean, I’ve already laid out the stowage plan, I’ve talked with my foreman, and I’ve talked to the ship and coordinated things there and talked to the elevator personnel to get everything worked out with them. I guess after 35 years, it just kind of falls in line.

It’s not like the old days when you had four gangs on a ship and you’re running grain-trimming machines here and there, making separations between different commodities or different grades of grain. Things have changed, drastically. It’s easier in certain regards, but more difficult in others.

Mates and captains are not as experienced as they once were, and they often put all their faith into computers. But stevedoring grain ships is not a science, and you can’t calculate art in a computer. Loading a ship is about 50 percent science and 50 percent art, but because of the quirks of the game, sometimes that can be an 80/20 proposition, sometimes 20/80.

Helberg: So now you’ve got the ship started, you’ve tended to the ship that’s finishing, you got through the inspection okay and now you’re in the forenoon.

Ilenda: And now I’m keeping track of what’s going on. If I have more than one ship in port, which is most of the time, I’m working two different channels on the VHF phone.

And, you know, these things [he points to his cell phone, which he answered five times during this hour-long interview)], they don’t get any hospitalization, they don’t get any fringe benefits, but they’re my full-time assistants.

Back in the ’70s, to make a phone call, you had to run into the elevator or go to the pay phone, running back and forth constantly. Cell phones are a Godsend, but they’re also a damnation because you can’t go anywhere without one.

If things start going wrong on a ship and I’m not there, I’ll get a call from my foreman, or the vessel agent or the elevator. And if there’s rain and we have to stop loading and an agent says, “Well, it’s not raining here,” I tell them, “Hey, I don’t do rain. I just load the ships.”

Helberg: As you get into the afternoon, questions usually arise about whether to run into overtime.

Ilenda: Twenty years ago, we sometimes worked around the clock. That’s when we had all the Soviet Union grain business and we turned out 240 or so saltwater ships in a year, plus the Canadian and domestic lakers. You might load one and get him out at 7 p.m. and another would be right on his tail coming in.

Then about 10 years ago, we’d work until 8 or 10 at night, maybe midnight, but very seldom past 10 p.m. Now we rarely go past 8 p.m.

Most of the elevators now see the folly of shutting off, as we once did, from noon until 12:30 p.m. and from 5 to 6 p.m. The reality is that it’s in everyone’s best interest to continue working through meal times because otherwise you lose so much time in the shutdown-and-startup process. Today, the idea is that once you get cranking, keep on going.

Helberg: What are the overtime implications for labor?

Ilenda: The longshoremen used to get double-time for working through meal hours, but with contract changes, they now get time-and-one-half, plus meal money. The only double-time today starts at midnight and goes until 8 a.m., but except for highly unusual situations, no one works it.

Helberg: When do you order labor for the following day?

Ilenda: On weekdays, we need to order by 5 p.m. for the next day. For Saturday, Sunday and Monday, we order by 5 p.m. Friday.

Helberg: As a stevedoring contractor, you have a Great Lakes-wide master contract with the International Longshoremen’s Association and then a local contract specifying local conditions. How many men are in an average loading gang?

Ilenda: It depends on the elevator, but in Duluth it’s basically a five-man gang: a foreman, or walking boss, and four men. At the CHS Elevator in Superior, where the loading spouts have to be maneuvered to the right and left by ropes, we have six and one, or a walking boss and five men. At the other Superior elevators, which are more automated, we have five and one.

When I started, we had nine men in a gang. There was a foreman, a lead man and seven men. As the elevators became more automated over the years, we were able to reduce the gang sizes.

Helberg: So you put that day to bed, and then…

Ilenda: And then you start all over again the next morning.