Aboard the Mark W Barker with Kate Wells and Captain Weber

Ever wonder about those freighters on the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland's Flats? Watching them navigate our crooked river is such a unique experience. More than 600 feet long, they share the shipping channel with recreational boaters, kayakers, and paddleboarders as they transport ore upriver to our steel mills. For this episode, Greg and I sat down with Kate Wells, Manager of Environmental Stewardship and Quality for the Interlake Steamship Company, to hear about the ship, sustainability in Great Lakes shipping, and the importance of this industry to our region. Later, we climbed (literally) aboard the Mark W Barker and spoke with Captain Alex Weber about life on board, what it's like to navigate the Cuyahoga, and maritime careers. The Mark W Barker is the newest in the fleet of ten vessels owned by Interlake Steamship. This second-generation, family-run company is based in Middleburg Heights, Ohio, and has the largest privately held U.S.-flag fleet on the Lakes. Interlake has been in business for over 100 years; today, it is one of the most efficient and environmentally responsible shipping companies in the industry, moving 20 million tons of cargo annually. While we were on board, we watched loaders fill the holds with taconite pellets to be delivered up the Cuyahoga to Cleveland Cliffs. Just one load could fill 700 train cars or 2,800 trucks, making it the most efficient way to transport raw materials to industry. Whether you are a "boat nerd", a Clevelander, or curious about the Great Lakes, this episode is a must. 

Learn more:

About The Interlake Steamship Company

About the Mark W Barker

Marine Traffic app

Green Marine certification

Transcript

Diane Bickett, host 0:04

You're listening to EcoSpeak CLE, a podcast for the Eco Curious in Northeast Ohio. My name is Diane Vickett, and my producer is Greg Rotuno. Together we speak with local sustainability leaders and invite you to connect, learn, and live with our community and planet in mind.

Episode and guest introduction - Kate Wells

Diane Bickett, host 0:22

If you've ever been to the flats in Cleveland, you've seen the enormous freighters on the lower Cuyahoga. It's a unique Cleveland experience watching those vessels navigate our Cricut River as they transport materials to and from our steel mills. And we're excited today to have with us our guest Kate Wells, who is the manager of environmental stewardship and quality for the Interlake Steamship Company. Kate and I met a few months ago at Great Lakes Brewing Company, where we invited her to join a panel to talk about the Blue Economy, which highlighted the importance of water to our region. And after she invited Greg and I on a tour of a freighter, and we're like, yes, that would be really fun. She's like, well, I just have to say that we might be chasing a few boats for a little while to make that happen. So that's exactly what happened today. We were supposed to be recording from the 639-foot Great Lake shipping vessel, the Mark W. Barker. Right now, that boat is delayed. So we will plan to get on that ship to meet the captain Alex Weber. Welcome, Kate.

Kate Wells, guest 1:32

Thanks for having me, Diane and Greg. I'm excited to be here. You know, again, I had planned for us to be aboard the Mark W. Barker for this, but that didn't quite shake out. And honestly, that is just how chasing boats go. It can be frustrating, but it will be rewarding once we get to step foot aboard and kind of experience what it's like being on one of the largest ships. This is actually our smallest ship, but one of the largest ships you've probably ever been on here in the lakes. So it's a very exciting experience.

Diane Bickett, host 1:58

We've been looking forward to this for a long time. And especially this newest boat. I mean, we understand that this is the newest in your fleet of 10. Are we calling them vessels? We'll call them we'll call them vessels.

Kate Wells, guest 2:12

We can call them vessels, we can call them boats, we can call them ships. I always thought people would get mad if you use the term boat, but I our president used the term boat. Like people use the term boat, so I use whatever you're comfortable with. I or interchangeably. That's what I do.

Diane Bickett, host 2:26

Okay. Well, the Interlake steamship company's been around for over a hundred years in this industry, and there's just so much about it, and so much to understand about how material moves across the Great Lakes. I understand that Great Lakes shipping, I mean, the scale of it is really hard to comprehend. It's a 20,300-mile marine highway that connects the Atlantic to our industrial heartland. And it's really a lifeblood that we don't think much about.

Kate Wells, guest 2:57

Yeah, things happen. Oh, sorry. Yeah, no. Things happen in the night, you know. Um I grew up here in Cleveland, I'm a native Clevelander, and I was not aware of this industry at all. Like I had seen boats go through the Cuyahoga as growing up, as you know, growing up and just seeing them in the river. You can't miss them. They're big, huge boats. And but it but I didn't understand the scale of it. I didn't understand the network in place and just the impact of the maritime industry on not just Cleveland's economy, but the Great Lakes, the broader Great Lakes region, just the amount of it's billions of dollars of economic impact coming through here, moving, you know, for us personally, 20 million tons of cargo annually. Wow. Free-flowing cargo, stuff that makes your cars, stuff that, you know, salts your roads in the winter, all these different types of cargo that people just don't think of. They come from the earth. We're not privy to them, we're not on these facilities, pulling them out. We don't see them move, and we move them in very, very great quantity and efficiently, which is great. Kind of keeps trucks off the road, minimizes impacts to the environment, infrastructure, and it's just a really efficient way to move all these things that people just don't think about going into building things and creating things.

Diane Bickett, host 4:11

Yeah. Can we get back to the lingo a little bit? So we decided to call the cargo vessels vessels. Okay. And but it's a laker, not a salty, right? That's correct. Because it's on the lake. What do you call the captain?

Kate Wells, guest 4:24

So here's another one where it's either captain or master. The license license is through uh US Coast Guard. They use the term master. So in our safety management system, in any kind of regulatory sense, it's master is what's used. But really, it's interchangeable with captain. Really, that just determines who's aboard, who's in charge. Um that person is aboard, they're on charge of the crew, they're in charge of the boat, they're in charge of the vessel, they're in charge of the cargo, they're in charge. So it's those are interchangeable terms.

Diane Bickett, host 4:54

And then what what do you call a member of the crew? The merchant marines, is it mariners?

Kate Wells, guest 4:59

So crew, mariners, those are all somewhat interchangeable as well. Maritime is complicated in the fact that there are a lot of words for the same thing. Then you get into the nitty-gritty of crew or mariners, and you have licensed folks and unlicensed folks in different positions aboard and different departments. So depends how deep you want to go.

Diane Bickett, host 5:18

Okay, well, let's stick with crew. And what do you call someone who chases boats? A boat nerd. A boat nerd.

Kate Wells, guest 5:26

Self-named. That's not that's not a mean thing. It is a it's a term of endearment.

Diane Bickett, host 5:32

There's literally an app called Boat Nerd, and uh we're saying Greg's a boat nerd. Yeah, he's gonna, he probably already has the app. I know you he has a marine transport.

Greg Rotuno, producer 5:41

I'm a marine traffic guy myself.

Kate Wells, guest 5:42

Okay, boat nerd just released an update. It's uh or a new app, and it's it's not bad. So I don't get paid.

Greg Rotuno, producer 5:49

Okay. You probably should.

Kate Wells, guest 5:51

Maybe.

Diane Bickett, host 5:52

So a little background about Interlake Steamship Company. Tell us, tell us a little about the history and where it's been and where it is today.

Kate Wells, guest 6:00

Yeah,

About Interlake Steamship

Kate Wells, guest 6:01

so Interlake Steamship Company is one subsidiary of Interlake Maritime Services, which is technically who I work for. I work at like kind of that parent level. And then Interlake Steamship is our bulk carrier fleet, which is the 10 vessels you alluded to, and one that the Mark W. Barker belongs to, which is our newest vessel. We also have Interlake Logistics Solutions, which is one vessel. It's a tug barge, a smaller tug barge that does kind of niche cargo out of Ludington, Michigan. And then we have Lake Michigan Car Ferry, which is the steamship badger, which is out of Luddington, Michigan, and crosses into Manitowak, Wisconsin. So we are privately held and we are U.S. flag. That's an important distinction here on the lakes. And we're family-owned and family-led. So we're in our second generation of being family led. So our president is Mark W. Barker, who is the namesake for the boat that we are hoping to tour later. That's fair. Yeah. So so yeah, the company has a long run, long-standing history. It's inner really, I we can just refer to it as Inner Lake because it's all one big family company, quite literally. And, you know, kind of in our practice, we operate as a family.

Diane Bickett, host 7:07

Where are they based then?

Kate Wells, guest 7:08

So we are based out of Middleburg Heights. That's where our headquarters is. And that's the suburb of Cleveland.

Diane Bickett, host 7:15

Milwaukee or something. Right. Or Michigan. Yeah. Yeah.

Kate Wells, guest 7:18

We do a lot all over the lakes, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota. But our home is here in Cleveland area. We've been at that, our location in Middleburg Heights since 2013. So for a while now. And what are some of the major ports that you go to? So we go to the we don't necessarily go to like port locations like a cruise ship or like a Salty would do, would go to. We go to a lot of private docks, but we do go to the Port of Cleveland's Cleveland Bulk Terminal here in Cleveland for iron ore, whether we're delivering it or we are loading it to take it to the steel mill. We go to the Cargill port for salt. So but a lot of the other docks we're hitting in Cleveland are along the Cuyahoga River, and they are customer locations that are along the banks of the river. So sometimes they don't necessarily look like what somebody would imagine from a traditional dock standpoint, and they don't really don't look like ocean going docks like Rotterdam or even here stateside, you know, the New Jersey port or whatever the port is. So they look a little different. So because of our operating, the way we operate and our kind of our short cargo runs and transits, we're zipping all over the lakes. So just different. The Mark W. Barker was just coming from Detroit. They came from Detroit and then they went to Fairport Harbor area for stone. And then now they're here in Cleveland to take iron ore from the Cleveland Bulk Terminal that was likely delivered. Well, it was delivered by one of our thousand-foot vessels on Monday, I believe. The Paul Archer Gertha was here. So that vessel is a much larger vessel. It comes from Duluth-ish area up in Minnesota and transports iron ore south. It could be two harbors. We do all of those. So we do Silver Bay, we do two harbors, we do Duluth. We were up in Superior, Wisconsin, but really those three in Duluth or in the Minnesota area are where we're coming from. It's from the Misabi Range. So they're taking that iron ore down. I think Greg knows more than I do.

Greg Rotuno, producer 9:16

He's a boat nerd. Our friends have a cabin up in northern Minnesota. So we have been to all those places. Yeah.

Kate Wells, guest 9:23

It's a beautiful area.

Greg Rotuno, producer 9:24

We love Duluth.

Kate Wells, guest 9:25

Oh my gosh, yes, love it. So yeah, they come, they bring that iron ore south in a very large capacity. They offload it at the Cleveland Bulk Terminal and other places around the lakes, but in the lower lakes to facilitate transfer to the actual mills. Cleveland is unique because they can't just go up to the mill because they don't fit in the river. So they have to drop it there. And then smaller boats like the Mark W Barker will then transport it out. And it's not just our boats. There's other carrier or not just our vessels, there's other carriers in the area, or in this industry rather, in the Great Lakes fleet US flag that carry as well.

Diane Bickett, host 10:00

It's crazy to think that a 639-foot boat is a smaller one.

Kate Wells, guest 10:05

Close to being our smallest one, yeah.

Diane Bickett, host 10:07

Yeah, yeah. And I heard one time that the for scale to get a sense of the scale, if you know Cleveland, that it's pretty much if you take the terminal tower and put it on its side, that's about the size of this ship and other ones in your fleet.

Kate Wells, guest 10:24

So the Paul Archer Gertha is is almost if they say against the Empire State Building. So yeah, I think it is like close to that.

Diane Bickett, host 10:33

There's

Efficiency of water transport

Diane Bickett, host 10:34

a lot of activity going on in the Great Lakes and moving tons and tons of cargo. If you were to maybe look at your company, how much in terms of road traffic or rail traffic are you being able to move more efficiently?

Kate Wells, guest 10:51

Well, when we're talking footer, so when we're talking, like, for example, the Paul Archer Gertha that just came this way this week bringing iron ore, the equivalent is 700 train cars or 2800 trucks in terms of capacity. So with the amount that she's carrying in iron ore, that the equivalent would be those 700 train cars or 2800 trucks. So imagine 2800 trucks with the same volume, you know, moving across the roadway, adding to congestion, adding to strain on the infrastructure. So um, and just doing it overall a lot less efficiently. Not to say there's not a place for trucks. We're not, we're not we're all for all multimodal approaches, but there are certain things that are better moved.

Diane Bickett, host 11:32

It's got to be more efficient and better from a sustainability standpoint. Absolutely.

Kate Wells, guest 11:36

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's it's far more efficient. It's gonna be just really the best way to do it, which is why they do it like that. It's had time to work out, you know, it's it's a better way to transport these things. It's why these mills are on water.

Diane Bickett, host 11:48

Okay. So how are they powered then? The vessels, well it's not a steamship. They're not steamships.

Kate Wells, guest 11:55

Some of them, some of them used to be. So we are called the Interlake Steamship Company because that particular company has roots over a hundred years back, back to 1913. So they were steamships. We had some of the vessels that are currently in our fleet. For example, the the Herbert C. Jackson, for example, was a steamship. We have actually several of them that went through conversions starting in 2006 to convert them over to internal combustion engines. So it really depends on the vessel you're talking about in terms of what that power plant looks like. This particular vessel, the Mark W Barker, has again our newest vessel, has two big EMD engines that are 4,000 horsepower apiece, unfortunately. But they are tier four engines, so they're EPAT or tier four, so they are at that highest level. They have selective catalytic reduction as part of their kind of configuration to help with NOx emissions, so nitrous oxides. So she's she's really quite different from the rest of our fleet, but all of our fleet, with the exception of the Badger, which lives in our Lake Michigan car ferry fleet, is internal combustion engines, no longer steamships.

Diane Bickett, host 13:02

Okay. Where are they where is this where are they being built?

Kate Wells, guest 13:05

Well, the mark was built a shipyard. There there is a shipyard in Sturgeon Bay called Finkenterry Bay Shipping, or Bay Shipbuilding, rather, that is up in Sturgeon Bay. That's where the mark W. Barker was built with US steel. So kind of in a full circle moment, you know, we would have carried iron ore pellets that would come down to the lower lakes and get turned into actual steel. And then that steel goes back on our boat. So it's kind of cool. Yeah, it's kind of a full circle thing. It's just like kind of showing that evolution of how that works. We are only US built boats as part of the Jones Act. Love it. Is are the boats highly automated? Ships have a lot of automation these days, especially compared to being steamships back in the day. You know, average cruise size is 15 to 23 people. It really depends on the vessel. Yeah, so they're not big. They're they were much larger engine rooms when you had a steamship because it just required so much more manpower. But now the weaving introduced internal combustion engines, diesel engines, they're a lot more efficient in that way. So, not a lot of mariners. This particular boat, Mark W, has, I want to say 20 some odd people on it. So a pretty capable crew, but not huge, right? And that's on the higher side. It really is dependent on the boat and what they're doing. I see.

Diane Bickett, host 14:21

Okay. Well, lots of different roles in a company like yours. And sustainability, I think, is a really cool one. And how did you get to be a sustainability director for a steamship company?

Kate Wells, guest 14:36

So

Kate's career, sustainability. Green Marine certification

Kate Wells, guest 14:37

I was working, so I'm a geologist by trade. So I have a master's in geology. I worked in consulting as a geologist and then ended up going client-side with somebody with a company and did federal, state, local regulatory across like 10 different states, got a lot of experience doing compliance-based regulatory. In 2020-ish, I was kind of looking for a change. I had kind of you know hit a point where I was in a senior role, a senior environmental role, and decided I maybe wanted my own department or to do something a little bit different. And I saw Interlake pop up and I'm like, what's this? And I, again, native Clevelander, living here, seeing the lake, seeing the river, never knew about this industry and started looking into it and realized they're, you know, they're moving a lot of cargo and there's a maritime industry. And what is the maritime industry? And it's kind of started that conversation.

Diane Bickett, host 15:29

And you were ground zero like Greg and I are today. Yeah, exactly.

Kate Wells, guest 15:33

So, and I'm five years in now, and I still don't still learn something new all the time. I am not a mariner, so but I am surrounded by mariners and I get to pick their brains, and it's really interesting.

Diane Bickett, host 15:45

Well, the all the compliance stuff that you do plays well into your role as sustainable in sustainability with all the certification programs and things, I imagine, that you're required to meet.

Kate Wells, guest 15:56

Absolutely. Yeah, it's really kind of set me up well, which is it it was a good experience to come from that position into this. It does translate quite nicely. So was there a surprising thing you learned when you joined the company? No, I thought it was interesting that you know, this is a 24-7. I came from a company where it was somewhat 24-7, but these boats are just always moving, always like dropping off one cargo, heading to the next, and picking up another cargo, and they're just kind of always crisscrossing the lakes. In fact, they do it about 700 times in a season. And our seasons are abbreviated. They're only from, you know, third week in March to middle of January. They they close or we kind of go into a winter work period and kind of kind of lay up during that time to accommodate the Sioux Locks closure because they have an idea.

Diane Bickett, host 16:45

That is not necessarily weather related, it's more for maintenance on the locks.

Kate Wells, guest 16:49

Correct. Yeah, because we cannot get iron ore from Lake Superior, the only way through is through the Soo Locks. So when they close that down, it effectively kind of shuts down that engine. There's still other things, but like you know, stone, they can't do things in the winter because stuff freezes. And yeah, it just really it's an abbreviated period, but there's a lot of movement and a lot of things to get done in a very relatively short period of time.

Diane Bickett, host 17:12

Yeah.

Kate Wells, guest 17:12

Wow, no kidding.

Diane Bickett, host 17:14

How many locks do you have to travel through?

Kate Wells, guest 17:16

Just the one for the Soo. We it depends on the lock that we're going through, but actually the core is in the process of building new locks, which is is going to be really great infrastructure-wise. So, but we just the one lock through there. Fortunately, we don't, well, not fortunately necessarily, but we don't deal with the seaway and the multiple locks that you have to transit in order to get out because our lakes, our our vessels don't leave the lakes.

Diane Bickett, host 17:41

When we talked earlier, you said there's a couple different certification programs. So starting with like the Green Marine certification. is there another one?

Kate Wells, guest 17:51

The Green Marine is a big one that we that we adhere to. Obviously, we adhere to the vessel general permit, the VGP, which is USCPA mandated, as well as any kind of Coast Guard regulations. And those regulations really do satisfy any compliance obligations we have. But being participants in the Green Marine program, which is a voluntary environmental certification program, it aims to like to guide continual improvement initiatives beyond regulatory obligations. So the intention above. Right. The intention is to always be doing more. And even beyond doing more, trying to see where we can improve beyond that and kind of pushing that envelope a little bit, we complete an annual self-certification process and then an independent third-party audit every two years. So there is some verify, you can verify outside of the program just to kind of add a little lend a little credibility to the process.

Diane Bickett, host 18:43

Okay. So what are some of the main focus areas then that you're tracking?

Kate Wells, guest 18:47

So as ship owners, as part of being a like classified as a ship owner with this program, we have seven performance indicators. They call them PIs. So they cover air emissions, aquatic invasive species, oil to lead discharges, ship recycling, and waste management. They assess them based on a scale one to five. And for the air emissions, it's broad, right? It's it's going to be your GHGs, it's going to be your criteria pollutants. It really is pretty comprehensive in touching soil, you know, air, water, you know, waste generated, that kind of stuff.

Diane Bickett, host 19:22

What local environmental organizations are you partnering with in the course of your work?

Kate Wells, guest 19:28

I'm currently a member of the Cuyahoga River AOC Area of Concern Advisory Committee and chair of their governance subcommittee. So I get the opportunity to represent our industry as well as our company as stakeholders, you know, using the river and just wanting to see its beneficial impairment removal and kind of get it delisted in the long run. We also partner with Argonauts on a couple of fronts. So not just from safety and river traffic and debris cleanup, they do a great job with all those efforts and educating folks on how to safely transit the river. But we also work with them on recruiting cadets at the high school level, you know, giving them exposure to on-the-job training skills so that maybe they can pursue, you know, a path in the maritime industry and kind of a different pipeline than they're used to. And then most recently we've partnered with the Cuyahoga County's Freshwater Institute on a couple of events, which has been really fun just to kind of get that exposure and just talk to people about our industry and what we do.

Diane Bickett, host 20:24

Yeah. I saw you and your colleague at Splash Day, which was a lot of fun down at Great Lakes Science Center. That was going

How to share the river with a freighter

Diane Bickett, host 20:32

back to safety, Argonaut does a great job, but you can never reiterate safety enough. So okay, I'm in the Cuyahoga River and I've got my little kayak, and the Mark W. Barker is coming up at me. What do I do?

Kate Wells, guest 20:48

Okay. So, first of all, the Cleveland Harbor and Cuyahoga River for the six miles in ish are considered a federal navigation channel. So they do have rules, you know, rules and regulations that everybody has to adhere to. I think it's really important to check the marine traffic app or the boat nerd app or both. Maybe cross-reference them. Make sure you know what's going on. If there's a giant boat in the middle, maybe be aware of that. And, you know, just to just to get an understanding of what kind of traffic is going on in the river. If you encounter a ship, give them a wide berth or a vessel that's bigger than you, give them a wide berth. The ships are tall and they have a lot of blind spots. And you have to assume the captain cannot see you and they likely cannot see you because of the freeboard on the side of the vessel. It's just they're just not able to see you. They're watching the banks. They are calling distances from the shore to make sure that they don't hit anything. They can't see down at that, like that water line level. And it's not safe to be close to these boats. There's a lot of things going on, to mention a few. You know, there's a lot of hydrodynamic forces at play. There's a lot of current current that's kicked up and you know, suction that happens as a result of movement of water, and they cannot stop quickly. And they cannot turn quickly. And I think people think they have the maneuverability of a wreckboat and they do not.

Diane Bickett, host 22:07

So I don't know how anyone could think that, but okay.

Kate Wells, guest 22:09

Yeah. Well, I mean, people that are coming up and trying to touch the hull. Yeah. Take your selfie on the land. Yes, exactly. We love selfies from a safe distance, right? Nobody wants anybody to get hurt. You know, we want to be we want to be good stewards. We want to share. We want people to enjoy the river. That's beneficial for everybody. But we also want people to be safe. So just give them some space.

Diane Bickett, host 22:31

I think in terms of navigating the Cuyahoga, maybe this would be a great question for the captain, what it's like, but but what type of training? I mean, how how long does it take a someone to learn how to get up the river?

Kate Wells, guest 22:45

I think it takes a lot of practice. You know, these captains are quite skilled. I've I have been in, you know, in the pilot house as they're transiting, and they're just cool as cucumbers, and I'm watching, and like, that's not very far away. Your distances you're calling are like five feet. Like that is really it takes a crew mentality. It's not just the captain, but the captains are incredibly skilled. But they have a wheelsman that's at the helm that's really kind of doing those little like maneuver, little small maneuvers based on the captain's direction. They have mates out on deck or on a watch that are calling distances to things, right? It could be docks, it could be shore, it could be structures of some sort. I think the challenge is not only we have a windy river, sometimes it has a heavy current, sometimes it has wreck boaters or paddlers or kayakers in it. Sometimes it has like weird stuff flowing through it, you know, that gets kicked up and ends up in a propeller. It's it's just a very dynamic river and it requires a lot of respect. Yeah. Our captains all need to have US Coast Guard masters credentials, and there's different levels of that licensure. So, like the tiki boat or the tiki barge captain has a credential. It's just that it's based on tonnage. So our masters have a certain level of tonnage that they need to be able to command. Oh, really?

Diane Bickett, host 24:05

So, how many years of training would it take to be better?

Kate Wells, guest 24:10

I feel like that'd be a better Alex question. But it depends on how I can give a little glimpse into how you get there. So there's a couple paths to get to that master or captain level. You know, you can you can go to maritime college, like a mass maritime or uh King's Point or the one up Great Lakes, GLMA, Great Lakes Maritime Academy up in Michigan. You can go and they they have them all over the country, a select few, but they you can go to the one of those types of places and get essentially a four-year degree, come out with some level of like of credentials. Okay. Then it's a lot of it is on the job, earning those hours. There's other tracks too, where you can be a deck hand and come out to work as like an ordinary seaman, which is an unlicensed position, and you can do what's called Hawes piping. So a Hawes piper is a term. Can you spell that? Yeah. So it's H A W E S P I P E R. And just quick context before I explain what that is a Haw's pipe is a structure in the ship that the anchor follows to get released. It's like a shoot, for lack of a better word, but the intention or the the idea behind that name is that you've climbed your way up. You've haws piped up. So that term refers to somebody that's worked their way up to where they are, yeah, and tested their way into. So about half of our captains, or actually half of our vessel leadership. So captains and chief engineers have taken that route to Hawpipe up. So it's really cool. Like that's a really good avenue. It's not just you have to go to maritime college to get there. Like you have people that have ascended and done well and kind of hit the leadership ranks by not without having to do a traditional what would be considered a traditional route.

Diane Bickett, host 25:56

Wow. So you have jobs available. I mean you're always hiring. Yep. You said Great Lakes, great jobs. Great Lakes, great jobs. Love it. Well, we're about ready to go on the boat. You've learned a whole lot in five years working for this company. Thank you for sharing some of that with us. Do you have any recommended reading, any cool books of Mariner Lore you want to leave with us?

Kate Wells, guest 26:18

Sure. So The Gales of November, The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald by John Bacon. I have not read it, but I've heard wonderful things, and Greg has read it and he's given it a thumbs up.

Greg Rotuno, producer 26:27

Yes, I have recommended it to many people.

Kate Wells, guest 26:29

So yeah, it's on my reading list, and I still haven't gotten to it, but I've just heard great things. So now that's one more person. I'd have to read this book. Yeah, I have to read this book. So that that's kind of where that's what I have for reading recommendations. I do have a couple places to visit to recommend for maritime enthusiasts in the area. You know, locally, folks can check out the National Museum of the Great Lakes in Toledo, where they have they have a tug, Ohio, which is a small tug and a schoonmaker, or you can see the William G. Mather at the Great Lakes Science Center in Cleveland. We have all these kind of relics of the industry available to us in museum form. There's also the Sioux Locks up in St. Sault Ste. Marie. So a little bit of a hike, but very cool. They have a freighter watching area and a museum there. And then obviously download your marine traffic app or your boat nerdnat app. And they're really helpful for keeping tabs on vessels. Go look at them. Go to the Cuyahoga, any or Cuyahoga rather, anywhere along where you can stop. There's a lot of opportunities to view these vessels and wave and say hi and you know, yeah, kind of be a boat nerd.

Aboard with Captain Weber

Diane Bickett, host 27:42

We are now, we climbed aboard the Mark W. Barker, and now we're in the pilot house. And we're here with Captain Alex Weber. Thank you for having us. We're like, how far above the water are we up here?

Captain Alex Weber, guest 27:56

Right here, we're about 80 feet above the water. Wow. Is the height of the pilot house?

Diane Bickett, host 28:01

Wow. It's a great view of Cleveland. Or it would be if there wasn't Canadian wildfire smoke, but yeah.

Captain Alex Weber, guest 28:07

One of the nice things about this job is the unique view of Cleveland we get. Coming in from the lake. That's definitely a view not many Clevelanders get to see going up and down the river. It's it's a very special view of the city.

Diane Bickett, host 28:23

Tell us what's happening today.

Captain Alex Weber, guest 28:24

So you came from we unloaded, we were in Fairport, Ohio, uh unloading limestone there. Okay. And then from Fairport, we came to Cleveland here. We're now at the Cleveland Bulk Terminal, loading iron ore. Okay. Um gonna be about 17,000 tons or so.

Greg Rotuno, producer 28:44

Wow.

Captain Alex Weber, guest 28:44

And then we're gonna take that up the river to the Cliff Steel Mill.

Diane Bickett, host 28:49

And how far or how many miles up is that?

Captain Alex Weber, guest 28:52

Uh it's about six miles up.

Diane Bickett, host 28:54

Okay. Tell us about the boat.

Captain Alex Weber, guest 28:56

So this is the Mark W. Barker. She's through sorry, 639 feet long and 78 feet wide. She's the newest built American freighter on the Great Lakes. She came into service in 2022. I've been here for most of that process since that time. And she's got all the bells and whistles you could ask for in a new boat.

unknown 29:22

Okay.

Captain Alex Weber, guest 29:22

She's incredibly maneuverable. She's built specifically for the Cuyahoga River and all of the twists and turns and the narrow, tight little bits that there are.

Diane Bickett, host 29:32

Wow. So I'm I'm just curious how long it took you to train the Cuyahoga

Learning the Cuyahoga

Diane Bickett, host 29:38

River.

Captain Alex Weber, guest 29:38

So I am a I graduated Great Lakes Maritime Academy in Traver City, Michigan. And I've been with Inner Lake ever since then for the past 10 years now. Okay. And I've been a captain for the past four of them, a relief captain on board. So it took me actually training on the river maybe three months. But during all of that time, starting out my career, I was up in the pilot house as much as I could, learning and observing. And the Cuyahoga River is incredibly narrow. It's an incredibly tight waterway. You're dealing with high river currents from runoff from rainstorms. You're dealing with recreational boaters. You're dealing with just a lot of different components in the river. Sometimes there might be an issue coming around one corner or something like that. Or it some days just feel like the boat doesn't want to turn as fast as she can do it some days.

Diane Bickett, host 30:39

What do you love most about doing this? You're from Cleveland, right?

Captain Alex Weber, guest 30:44

Um yep. Live in the Cleveland area. I probably have to say what I love the most about the job is the uniqueness of it. Every day is something different. Every day I either get to put my skills to the test as a ship handler and you know getting to drive the boat and get the most out of the vessel, or it's dealing with regulatory agencies and compliances and making sure that we're being the best that we can be out here.

Life on board

Diane Bickett, host 31:15

So you're living here on this vessel with a crew and they're all living together. How's everyone get along?

Captain Alex Weber, guest 31:24

Well, actually, that's that's really one of the things I like about Interlake. They do take a family-first approach. And it's emphasized that we out here, we are a family. At the end of the day, what I do is more for the crew members on board than anything else. I'll end up spending more time out here with them than I will put my family back home throughout the year. So you really do form bonds and you form relationships with these individuals. And it's it's one of the nice things about the job. When when people do come to a retirement age, they don't say they're gonna miss the job, they say they're gonna miss the people.

Diane Bickett, host 32:08

Well, Kate pointed out too that all the vessels in the fleet are named after family members in the company.

Captain Alex Weber, guest 32:16

Yep.

Diane Bickett, host 32:16

Maybe someday there will be a Weber?

Captain Alex Weber, guest 32:20

No, don't need that.

Greg Rotuno, producer 32:24

That's that's what isn't a bad luck.

Captain Alex Weber, guest 32:28

Yeah, no, that's that's too much pressure on me. I'm fine with just driving them. I don't I don't need one named after me.

Diane Bickett, host 32:36

Were you like always fascinated with the Great Lakes when you grew up, or was this something you came to later in life?

Captain Alex Weber, guest 32:44

I I did like the Great Lakes. I worked on tall ships for a couple of years in my teenage years, and then I realized I wasn't smart enough to be a geologist, so I decided to come out and work on boats.

Diane Bickett, host 32:56

Okay.

Captain Alex Weber, guest 32:56

So then in a roundabout way, ended up, yeah, like I said, attending Great Lakes Maritime Academy and graduated from there with my third mate's license and never looked back.

Diane Bickett, host 33:08

How long does it take to load the oar and like a round trip up and back to Cleveland Cliffs? How long? From from when you dock to when you leave again? Is it a couple days?

Captain Alex Weber, guest 33:20

Oh no, we'll do a full trip in under 24 hours.

Diane Bickett, host 33:24

Oh wow.

Captain Alex Weber, guest 33:24

Yep.

Diane Bickett, host 33:25

Okay.

Captain Alex Weber, guest 33:25

We'll we'll load here and probably get done loading around 1.30 in the morning. And then due to some traffic in the rivers, we'll have to go tie up, wait. But usually it's maybe 20 hours round trip to spread the load out to make sure that you know nobody's working too much or getting everybody a good break.

Diane Bickett, host 33:46

When you get to other destinations, do you have time to get off and experience other places, or are you pretty much on board?

Captain Alex Weber, guest 33:54

I generally tend to stay on board, but I do know a lot of other crew members. They love going up the street at some of the other docks we go to, going and exploring the cities. One of the last ports we were in was actually Holland, Michigan. And before we made the dock, I came up to the pilot house, and the mate was looking at the museum in Holland to go see what he could go see and see what they had, everything like that. So it is it is one of the nice parts about the job. You get to see a lot of the Great Lakes that you might not usually see. Yeah. And from a different perspective.

Diane Bickett, host 34:25

Okay.

Interested in working on a ship?

Diane Bickett, host 34:26

What advice would you give to someone who wants to do what you're doing?

Captain Alex Weber, guest 34:30

If there's anybody that would want to go into this industry, I would strongly encourage it. It's one of the few jobs where when you aren't working and you're home, you're home. It's incredibly nice to have 30 days off.

Diane Bickett, host 34:46

Oh, is that how it works? Okay.

Captain Alex Weber, guest 34:48

Where you're home, you have no commitments to work or anything like that, and you can relax. And that's that's a fantastic feeling. But any advice I could give to anybody that's wanting to come out, it's not as intimidating as it seems. Okay. It's I remember my first day stepping a boat. It was actually my first day as a cadet getting on a freighter was at this dock. And I remember how intimidating that was and talking to everybody on board, and I thought to myself, what did I get myself into? But now looking back on it, it's not nearly as intimidating as it feels.

Diane Bickett, host 35:29

Okay.

Captain Alex Weber, guest 35:29

Everybody would be glad to have you out here working. And just bring a good pair of shoes.

Diane Bickett, host 35:35

What an adventurous life. Wow.

Captain Alex Weber, guest 35:37

I uh I wouldn't have it anyway.

Greg Rotuno, producer 35:40

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