After loading over 63,000 tons of iron ore pellets at Burlington Northern-Santa Fe Dock #5 in Superior, WI the 1004-foot M/V Edgar B. Speer has made the three-day trip to U.S. Steel’s unloading facility at Conneaut, OH. It will take around 12 hours to unload the cargo through a 52-foot retractable unloading boom at a rate of over 5,000 tons per hour into a hopper. From the hopper the pellets will be sent to a storage area by a conveyor system then loaded into rail cars for shipment to U.S Steel’s plant in Pittsburg, PA. The pellets originated at U.S. Steel’s Keetac Mine at Keewatin, MN on Minnesota’s Iron Range. Regardless of the mine being temporarily shut down, the cargo was mostly reclaimed from piles left on the property. As soon as unloading is complete, the Speer will depart for Two Harbors, MN where it will load for U.S. Steel’s Gary Works in Gary, IN.
