Chapel Steel

Chapel Steel faced complex shipping challenges in supplying a new shipyard. Combining rail service to our terminal, on-site storage and trucking from the terminal to the shipyard, RiverLift has delivered 76 million pounds of steel over two years — without missing a single delivery target.

Background
A new shipyard in Brownsville, PA required lots of flat plate steel for the construction of hopper barges. Its modern assembly line ran two shifts/day, seven days/week to meet a production schedule of building two barges per week. Chapel Steel wanted to supply the necessary steel to the shipyard and turned to RiverLift to help develop and execute a logistics solution.

Challenges
Each barge required 400 to 500 tons of new steel, with up to 40 different types of plate. Each plate had to be delivered in the right sequence for the assembly line. Not getting the right plate delivered on time could shut down production.

The shipyard could only receive by truck. To minimize the amount of welding, it ordered the plate cut to large sizes: up to 40' long by 9' 8" wide. However, this made it too costly to ship the plate directly from the mill to the shipyard that was several hundred miles away because trucks with more than 8' load width need special permits that restrict the move to daylight hours during the week using approved routing.

Solution
Instead of trucking directly from the mill, Chapel Steel contacted RiverLift and Norfolk Southern. Arrangements were made to ship the plate from the mill on flatbed rail cars to RiverLift in advance. RiverLift off-loaded the plate and sorted it by part number. When assembly orders were placed, RiverLift was able to quickly load the steel onto flatbed trailers staged at our site. Having already set up an on-line oversized load permit with the Department of Transportation, RiverLift's trucks then transported the steel the remaining 25 miles to the shipyard.

Using the terminal to stage the steel close to the shipyard's assembly line helped Chapel Steel meet their customer's needs. RiverLift handled, sorted and delivered over 76 million pounds of steel over two years-enough to build more than 70 new barges-without missing a single delivery target. When changes required expedited delivery, RiverLift was able to pull the order and have it delivered to the shipyard within three hours of the request.