One right way to get coke on board.

You can't just dump the stuff onto a vessel; it's a science that's almost art

On an overcast May morning, Ron Ponce stands aboard the Rio Verde ship in the Port of Long Beach and moves a few switches on a control panel resting on the outer edge of a hatch into the ship's 60-foot-deep hold.

The switches turn on a series of conveyor belts connected to a 4-foot-in-diameter chute that hangs over the ship's hatch, spewing out more than half a ton of petroleum coke per second -- that's 2,300 tons an hour. The coke makes a loud sifting sound, like a chorus of moviegoers shushing for quiet, as it is being poured.

The hatch, one of seven on board, is filled with steam because the coke contains moisture that evaporates when it is rapidly dumped.

Last year, 74 million tons of cargo moved in and out of the Port of Long Beach. Much of the port's cargo is transported in large, uniform metal containers and is transferred on and off ships by cranes. Other cargo shipped piecemeal so it can be marked or counted, such as cargo in crates or boxes, is also lifted off ships.

Cement, petroleum coke and other commodities that cannot be marked or counted are considered bulk cargo and must be loaded and unloaded using other means.

Aboard the Rio Verde, Ponce manipulates the controls to move the chute into the hatch's northwest corner. The hatch must be evenly loaded so the ship stays balanced. And at that particular moment, the ship was getting slightly off-balance, explains Ponce, who has been loading bulk cargo onto ships for the past 26 years.

Ponce, a crane operator with Seattle-based Stevedoring Services of America, is always on different ships loading a vast array of commodities.

Ponce usually uses a hand-held "level," similar to those used by carpenters, to determine if the ship is balanced. If the air bubble is centered in the liquid, the vessel is balanced.

But Ponce has been loading ships so long he has other, less conventional, ways for determining whether or not a ship is balanced. For instance, one method he uses is to simply eyeball the nearest light pole on land to see if it lines up with the ship's mast. Since light poles are all installed at 90-degree angles, the ship is balanced if its mast is parallel with the light pole, he explains.

Much of the coke being loaded on the ship that gloomy May morning had just come off trucks.

Several of these trucks, each carrying about 20 tons of petroleum coke, wait in line at the Koch Carbon Inc. terminal to dispose of their loads.

The first truck driver in line pulls into a garage-like building, pushes a button in his cab that opens the bottom of his hopper trailer, and all the coke the truck is carrying falls through a large hole in the floor and onto a moving conveyor belt below. Wichita, Kan.-based Koch Carbon is in the business of buying, selling and loading petroleum coke onto ships.

This coke, along with coke dumped by the other trucks, travels along a series of about eight covered conveyor belts positioned in various directions and angles stretching to the ship-loading crane.

At one point toward the end of its conveyor belt journey, the coke reaches a scale. The scale indicates to the loading crew how fast the coal is being loaded, how much coke is on-board and how much coke is in the hatch presently being loaded.

At 9 a.m. on this particular day, the Rio Verde is loading at a rate of 1,582 tons per hour, there are 11,843 tons already on-board and 2,780 tons of coke are in hatch No. 5, which is the hatch being loaded.

On days when a ship isn't being loaded, conveyor belts bring the coke dumped by trucks to the top of several silos located at the terminal and drop it in. Then, when a ship comes in to be loaded, the bottoms of the coke-filled silos are opened, and the coke spills onto conveyor belts stretching over to the ship.

Ponce's job comes in when the coke reaches the crane's chute. Ponce manipulates the chute so the coke is loaded evenly.

And, of course, he must know when to stop loading. He has to push the stop button before the hatch is completely full because an extra 50 tons of coke shoots out of the hatch after the system is turned off, Ponce says. Pushing the stop button too late could create an enormous coke float, one that Baskin-Robbins would never dream of serving up.

Ponce adds that he can "eyeball" when the crane needs to be turned off.

Ponce points out the various buttons on the control panel. One button operates the telescoping chute, moving the spout up and down. Another can be used to maneuver the chute's spout to load coke under the hatch's wings.

Other buttons move the chute's spout back and forth horizontally, while another allows Ponce to rotate the spout clockwise and counter-clockwise.

Meanwhile, over at the Chiquita Brands Inc. terminal, workers unload the Santos Star, a ship full of boxes of unripened bananas prepacked in Central America.

The banana boxes are stacked on various levels in the ship's hold. As the upper layers of boxes are removed, workers remove flooring to expose the next layer, explains Hal Hilliard, marketing manager for the port. The boxes are unloaded in a methodical manner so the ship remains balanced.

Workers position the boxes underneath lifting gear, which picks up the boxes and places them on the dock. From there, workers operating forklifts transfer the boxes of bananas on pallets to warehouse-size cooling chambers to be refrigerated until they are delivered throughout the West Coast, Hilliard says.

Over at Pacific Container Terminal, four crane operators unload from the ship Gaohe an average of 27 containers per hour. These operators probably each make more than $100,000 a year, says Matt Todd, superintendent for Stevedoring Services of America who overseas the ships being loaded and unloaded.

Unloading containers is tricky business. From 110 feet above the ground in his control booth, an operator lowers a metal beam, 8 feet wide and either 20 or 40 feet long, depending on the container's size, into the hold. He lines up twist locks on the beam that lock onto the container's four top corners and a light on the beam signals when the locks are secure.

The crane operator then lifts the container out of the hatch and centers it above the empty chassis of a waiting truck. The operator must then, again from 110 feet up, line up metal cones on the four corners of the container's bottom with holes in the chassis. A worker on the ground guides the crane operator through this process.

Once the cones are lines up, the crane operator drops the container onto the chassis and goes back for another round.