Salt 8a

Timbuktu?  Taudenni?    Has tugster gone back way west?

A buried ship?

Nah . . . See the Newark Bay Bridge in the background and if you look carefully just under the open clamshell in the center of the foto, you might spot WTC1 in Manhattan.

Here’s a closer up of United Challenger–now back at sea and bound for Norfolk, actually Newport News, I think, to load coal.    See the WTC1 between the crane cab and the bridge?

The workday is getting under way.

Clamshells drop the salt into the loader.

Huge trucks loaded with relatively small increments of the 61,000 ton cargo transport the road salt to

the top of the mountain.

Here you’re looking from the ship at–I’d guess–at least a million tons of road salt.

And these are one of two sets of hands that unload the ship by controlling

clamshell buckets this size.  Think of these places, ships, and crews when next you’re driving on icy roads.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.  More soon.   Many thanks to Brian DeForest of Atlantic Salt for permission to get these fotos.

Tangentially related:  Check out this article in the NYTimes about my friend John Skelson.