High and Mighty : Harbor Crane Operators Can Lift 40 Tons at a Time With Their Fingertips

Bob Negrete was the brain of the mechanical giant that loomed over a cargo ship, lowering 25-ton containers into the vessel’s belly.

Boom. A perfect hit. The corners of the 40-foot-long metal box locked onto the small pins on the ship nearly 100 feet below.

“First time. Whoa. That doesn’t happen that often,” said Negrete, a bull of a man who works in a small control room suspended from a hammerhead crane in the Port of Long Beach.

Hammerhead cranes, which stand more than 200 feet tall with their booms up, are the workhorses of the port. They load and unload the millions of tons of clothes, furniture, machinery, heavy equipment and other cargo on and off ships that pass through the port each year.

Crane operators are the highest paid machine operators in the port, and it is not just because they work high off the ground. Some of them make more than $70,000 a year. In return, they bear a heavy burden for the safety of life and property.

By moving a lever, an operator can pick up as much as 40 tons of cargo. With the touch of another, he can just as easily send it crashing onto workers below or dump millions of dollars worth of cargo onto the dock or into the water.

Only the most experienced longshoremen--generally those with more than 20 years on the job--drive the cranes. They must be in good health and have good depth perception, said Frank Hammond, a training supervisor for the Pacific Maritime Assn. Aspiring crane drivers used to be tutored by mentors. Now they receive 15 to 20 days of specialized training before taking the helm of a hammerhead crane, he said.

About 300 longshoremen drive the 63 hammerhead cranes full time or part time in the Port of Long Beach and the neighboring Port of Los Angeles, an official said. Negrete, 53, is the son and father of longshoremen. He works the night shift, when the port glows in the orange light of high visibility lamps that may mean the difference between life and death in the world of mammoth cranes. Blue beacons spin atop many of the port vehicles so crane operators can see them coming.

To reach his work station, Negrete climbs a metal ladder that leads to an elevator that carries him to more ladders. He walks past the engine room, where electrical motors cast out and reel in inch-thick cables as if they were fishing line.

Negrete and his partner, George Padovan, unloaded and loaded the 535-foot-long National Dignity on a recent night when the water off Pier J reflected the harbor lights like a mirror. Clothing and cotton goods came off, and cement mixers and other equipment went aboard.

The two men took turns working in a chair that has half a dozen control levers on each side.

Negrete pulled one and peered through glass panes on the floor. He focused on the 40-foot container on a truck waiting beside the ship, and the beam of his crane locked onto the container. The control room shuddered as the cable grew taut and the 25-ton load began to rise.

At the same time, Negrete pulled another lever that propelled his control booth and the load along the boom of the crane. The cargo container traveled in a huge arc, clearing the side of the ship and settling into the hull below.

At one point, Negrete radioed a helmeted longshoreman below and warned him to stay clear of the crane’s heavy beam.

“Your worst fear is hitting somebody or killing somebody,” Negrete said.

Accidents are a fact of port life. A longshoreman died in March in the neighboring Port of Los Angeles after he was struck by the beam of a hammerhead crane and fell off a ship.

The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office is investigating the death, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Fred Macksoud.

News of such accidents spreads quickly but does not linger.

“We really don’t talk about it because I think we’re scared of it,” said Negrete, a burly man in a black jacket, Levi’s and black boots.

Negrete and Padovan said they have had accidents over the years that damaged containers and cargo, but they have never hurt a person.

Padovan, 58, can now laugh about the time his crane knocked an anchor onto a container filled with wine. It crashed through the container and the wine flowed.

“The smell up here . . .” said Padovan, who has worked the docks for more than 30 years.

After years of driving, the crane operators sometimes play games to make the job more interesting. They try to land and lock the cargo containers onto the small pins on the hull of a ship on the first try. It’s like a hole-in-one, Padovan said.

If the operator is off by as little as a couple of inches, the container will not lock onto the pins and he must try again.

Negrete said he also likes to pass the containers over the side of the ship with minimal clearance, relying on his sharp depth perception.

“We have to play little games with ourselves to stay interested,” Negrete said.

The crane drivers said only failing eyesight or other health problems would keep them from commanding the giant cranes.

The advance of technology may one day make their jobs obsolete. But, for now, they joke about an abandoned effort to use a computer to drive a crane. It was too inaccurate, frequently missing its mark, they said. Once it overran a ship and damaged a railing, they said. “It would be a very difficult thing to do,” said Padovan, contemplating the day a machine might take his job. “But who knows.”

Loading and Unloading

The Port of Long Beach handled the equivalent of 1.8 million 20-foot containers of goods valued at $45 billion in the fiscal year that ended June 30. Here are the top imports and exports.

TOP INCOMING GOODS

Electric machinery

Plastic products

Steel products**

Clothing

Machinery

Furniture

Rubber products

Foods, miscellaneous**

Cement*

TOP OUTGOING GOODS

Bulk coke*

Wastepaper

Chemicals**

Scrap metal*

Coal*

Food, miscellaneous**

Electric machinery

Metals, miscellaneous**

Cotton

* Not moved by crane

** Part moved by crane

Source: Port of Long Beach