Your father was Brutus Herriott. Please accept my condolences, I know the details of the accident. Did you grow up around in Jeffrey Manor, on Yates? Thank you so much for commenting and again, I am sorry for your loss.
Larry car operator is a tough job, those are some brutal conditions and I’m not sure which would be worse, winter or summer. Your dad must have been a very tough dude.
It’s amazing the machines man can create to perform tasks. No one ever sees how the sausage is made. It’s a shame so much American industry has been shipped overseas. “Steel mill workers I’d to thank you for your time, you work a 40 hour week for a living….just a move it on down the line”
Classic song! This video gets like 10 views everyday, it seems like it has become an excellent primer on coke making, regardless of the facility making it. I have visited the plant probably close to 50 times now (I kept track up to #40), I’ve found a lot of cool stuff, I’ve found a lot of historic stuff that I think is important, but this takes the cake. You can’t imagine the day I found it (I had ransacked this office more than once before) I was almost shaking, then had to wait hours to get home and see what it was (the tape was unlabeled) or if it would even play at all. I found more than a few tapes and each time I hoped it was this (I knew it existed from correspondence I had found) but I’d always strike out. I’m glad you enjoyed it. What job seems the most interesting to you? I know my pick!
I did some computer work for the SAP project to support the caster in 96-98. I have been at the coke plant a few times. The people that work there are truly endangering themselves, and they should be respected for the hard work they do. You will never forget the first time seeing the coke like "lava" being pushed out.
Thank you for commenting! Curious why you visited the coke plant when you were doing computer work in Riverdale? Either way be glad you did- I wish I could have!
@@onesixfive The SAP project included some time and attendance functions that used a card reader at the gate. The idea was the worker would swipe there badge. It was also to gauge where people were should a accident occur. I heard that when ACME decided to build the new caster plant, one of the engineers from the german manufacturers asked the ACME board what computer system they had. One of the executives said "we have been making steel for 100 years, we don't need a computer system". So the manufacturer responded they would not be able to track and bill fast enough for the amount of steel they were going to be making. Being this was in 1996, stuff like ethernet, connections to other buildings, was in a state of flux. Their was an antenna installed at the blast furnace which connected back to Riverdale. A fiber connection was installed between the coke plant and the blast furnace, by having the fiber go through the conveyor and over the river! The SAP project turned out to be a mess. Since it was in German, many of the screens and messages would be in german, requiring translation. Steel and raw materials were measured in tons, not the metric system. So many reports from SAP had to be converted to english measurements so the executives could use them.
i can weigh in on two issues on this topic even though i was not present for the work you did: 1) i work for a company (almost 18 years now) and we switched to SAP a couple years in, it was a very difficult transition and even today at times it can be frustrating, though i do not doubt its accounting/inventory/etc capabilities are superior 2) no question that up until the very end of the coke plant (2001) even email still had barely taken off, because i have found a great deal of hand written memos, without which i would have learned a fraction about the plant (check out my website, link in description)
@@onesixfive I think the drop in steel prices is what ultimately doomed them. In addition they had a lot of problems because of very old resistance to change. SAP was designed around modern business practices. Acme modified SAP instead of adopting modern business practices. I take the metra electric downtown, and riverdale is a shell of it's original company. Many buildings were razed.
I spent 38 years of my life working all of the jobs in operations and as a patcher for my last 7 years there at U.S.Steel’s Clairton Coke Works. This video is a very good example of the jobs covered. Thank you for posting this.
You are welcome! It’s a privilege to hear that a real journeyman of the industry approves of my small contribution. I worked very hard to get this content in a real coke plant, and it was dangerous in many ways. Your comment is my reward. So thank YOU!
So, ACME steel had the TQIP (Total Quality Improvement Process) to remind employees to work at their best the first time. I worked for the Chicago & North Western Railway. They had a "quality program" introduced in 1986 called TQIS (Total Quality Improvement System). A lot of C&NW employees referred to it as "Tortured Quietly into Submission." Many other companies had "quality programs" such as Conrail and Inland Steel.
Yeah it’s pretty typical corporate BS. It’s interesting because I have since come across TQIP (sometimes only TQI) and I wouldn’t have any idea what it meant if not for the video. Tortured quietly into submission is awesome lol I did some research on TQIP, check it out www.acmecoke.com/tqi-bulletin-board/
from Paper Industry, our boss originally denied such program, because he was convinced that we knew ourselves how to make best quality! Later he admitted the courses and procedures, and in fact it just was flow-sheets and paper-work, check-boxes, no real knowledge. But they had some traps making life annoying without improving. pE. in the lab the pH-meters calibration! The boss had to set the limits by himself, no advice from those coaches, because they knew nothing about laboratory themselves. So mostly the limits were set too narrow and later it is such a unnecessary hassle-tassle to adhere to the self set limits, to get the approval stamp ISO9000. Knowing a bid about drift and calibration I advised my boss to set the limits quite generously; we had no problem to get the ok stamp and the effects on our product were 0. In fact I invented a method to make SCB calandered paper rolls smoother , without listening to quality program teachers.
Best job I ever had, did all the disciplines. Ram(Pusher) Ram bottoms Guide Larry car Battery tops(lid man) Wharf. We didn't have self sealing doors, they all had to be sealed by hand with daub & daub trowels, did 12hr shifts, days & nights, 27 ovens on night shift 26 ovens on day shift. Miss the lads I worked with which made the job bearable. Worked at the Monckton coke & chemical company in Royston Near Barnsley South Yorkshire, England. It was the last independent Coke ovens in Britain , unfortunately it closed in Dec 2014. this video brings it all back, many thanks.
amazing comments! I commend you for your service in such a challenging environment and industry. no doubt many thousands of people benefit daily from the steel that your coke made!
Thanks for sharing this video. I work at Clairton Coke Works, did almost 3 years on the batteries before I bidded out to chemicals. Was qualified to run the pusher machine but never trained on any other machines. Lidded/jambed for a couple months a couple years apart but primarily was in charge of dealing with the ovens door emissions. Lots of cleaning with those knife edges and Chuck doors. Totally bizarre to see a jamb cleaner on the pusher side as opposed to just the coke side. We don’t have those but we do on the coke side door machines. Amazing how different things are up top too. No mud on the standpipes, manually dumping the coal into the ovens from the outside. Granted this was taken 26 years ago, times and technology have greatly changed. No “coking in” at Clairton - we shovel it either onto the pad or into a coke bin on the pusher. Guess someone got burned bad years back. So getting caught by a white hat coking in is a write up offense. Always found it fascinating to see how different it is with how things are done from one coke plant to another. Similar in the manner of the job to be done, but so much more different in the manner of how their done. The funniest thing I noticed is we still use those same exact type of brooms on top side. Guess they couldn’t find a new way to replace those! Lol!
Thank you so much for all your insights! I have pinned your comment at the top so it doesn’t get missed. Looks like Clairton is one of now only 14 remaining coke plants in the US. You would mud the riser caps? That’s the kind of plant specific stuff I find interesting. You mention “manually dumping coal from the outside”. Did you not use a Larry car to charge the ovens? And those must be special brooms for batteries at $250 a pop! LOL. Thanks for commenting!
@@onesixfive Make it 13 and counting now after the announcement at Follansbee, WV. We used a Larry car to charge the ovens, but the operator charged everything via a touch screen within the cab. I was referring to your Larry cars in this video. As for the riser caps, yes, our larryman seals them up with a mud wand after they clean the gooseneck, standpipe and the riser cap itself. Don’t stand underneath where the larryman is working if you don’t want to be covered in the mud! We also make passes regularly to put more mud onto anything that may be leaking throughout our shifts. It always really sucked when the larryman would clean all that mud off in your series you swept when lidding. Made for some miserable work trying to get it all into the charging holes after the coal was dumped. To sweep all of that in and still be able to keep up with the next charge, dampering off ahead, pulling the next set of lids, and then of course sliding your current lids back on, mud them up and take steam out was a real chore. You learn that man, we really can get a lot of shit done in 8 minutes! But we also learn, that doing it with a respirator on totally kicks your ass too! Our plant is regulated by some of the most stringent environmental measures in the entire country. Now a 20 minute drive down the river to Monessen’s Cleveland Cliff’s plant and it is a totally different world on what is legal and what is not on the very same emission standards. I certainly will not miss working on those batteries whatsoever. But naturally, I do miss doing it from time to time and often think it would be cool to do it again for “old times sake” every once in a while to see if you still got it. Not many people can say they lidded on top of a coke battery. I’d like to experience working on a blast furnace too for the sake of being able to say I did that also, but that likely will never happen. Funny you mention that about those brooms! For as much as we went through those all the time, I never once realized they were that damn expensive! Explains why they kept them under lock and key, after all.
@@Hail2Pitt412 “not many people can say they lidded on top of a coke battery” - no sir they cannot! When I first put this video up I shared it with a friend. If you think I don’t know much about a coke plant well she only knows what I tell her. Not the worlds best teacher! But we were talking about all the different positions and I asked which one she found the most interesting and she instantly said “lidman”. Maybe I’d cry like a little girl if you stuck me up there but god knows I’ve thought about it and studied on it more than most people. I wrote a long analysis of a training guide I found, if you are ever bored you can have a look. As a legit lidman id be curious about your opinion www.acmecoke.com/acme-coke-chicago-plant-lidman-training/ Thanks again for the excellent comments!
Yeah I worked at a large steel mill in the Midwest. When I first started I was in the labor gang and we did most of the jobs on the battery. I saw enough to know that I had no desire to work on the battery or in preheat. So when I got off probation I transferred to the coal and coke handling sequence. Screw the battery
You’re correct, which is why not much steel is made in the US, and the steel that is made is not all made via this method. There are very few coke plants left in the USA
Which is a shame. American made steel is critical to our national security and often more pure than the junk China drops on us. There’s an awful lot of good paying hard working jobs from the iron ore mines in MN to the steel plants along the river and the coal in West Virginia and Kentucky. We need politicians who actually care about this stuff and not just lip service. More concerned about climate than Americans having jobs.
Thank you so much for commenting! How long have you worked at the plant? I’m curious how similar things look to modern day (video is from 1995). Again thanks for watching and commenting. Love to hear from someone in the industry!
Great video showing a step in the production of steel. Steel used to make farm machinery used to plant, grow, harvest, ship the food we eat everyday, etc. We live in the Age of Steel. Unfortunate, American industry is being shipped overseas.
This method of steel making was regulated to death. They still make a ton of coke in India and other parts of the world, but not the USA. Very sad! Thanks for watching!
@@onesixfive Good point re regulating out of existence. Since fossil fuels underpin everything in the modern world and industry in particular. The hypocrite climate cult is regulating American and western industry for that matter out of existence. China benefits to our detriment. It was American manufacturing which was a factor in the Allies Victory in World War II
Some of my fondest memories were driving past the Acme Steel coke plant and underneath the huge conveyor that crossed over Torrance Ave. Especially at night. They tried to petition to turn this site into a landmark but it fell through. It is now part of a government Superfund to clean up the contaminated land and turn it into either a park or recreation area.
I worked for a waterblasting company that did some service tasks on the Inland Steel coke ovens in the 70's. What a dangerous, hellish job. I remember a warning sign on a stairs up, "Caution. Cancer hazard. No eating". We wore long johns in the summer. Wooden clogs.
one of my contacts at acme told me a story about a lidman who actually chose to eat his lunch up there. they had to tell him you cant be up there! what kind of a loon would spend even a minute longer. ive seen some lidman shoes like you described - all the ones i saw were homemade. im sure you saw some wild stuff!
@@onesixfive On rare occasions we blasted the charging holes. They'd get a hard carbon build-up. And the wooden leather clogs were provided by Inland Steel.
i worked in fords coke ovens as a millwright apprentice in 78 and 79. what a nasty job. those guys working around the pusher, door machine, and the charging car are in danger from the equipment and the fumes...oh my god...stink like you won't believe. We called them the choke ovens. Hot in the summer cold in the winter, vapor and dust , high incidence of cancer in all departments . as a millwright one of my jobs was to replace that knife edge on the doors, a 4 hour plus job basically all day. tricky to get the old one off in the shop. lots of heat from a welders torch bees wax. just one of many nasty jobs. Not a building I wanted to graduate in. they are all torn down now.
@@onesixfive rouge complex in Dearborn on the rouge river on the border of detroit. ford had a complete steel making operation starting in the early 20's. 205 coke ovens in 5 batteries. the machinery looks pretty much identical.
6:52 in future of coking an improvement in quality and energy could be made by quenching with compressed cold or even superfluid CO2 in a pressure Tank and utilizing the energy of the heated CO2 in a Brayton cycle CO2-gas Turbine. Without contact to water/steam the Purity of coke-carbon would get closer to the theoretical limit!
Far from gone my friend! Plenty left to explore. Just stopped by a couple weeks ago. Only 14 plants left in the US as of about 18 months ago, not sure if any of those have closed. But yes I agree it is sad. Thank you for watching!
@@onesixfive Mountain State Coke, not too far from me in WV, now owned by Cliffs is closing this year too. Being replaced by a BDI facility to produce a replacement feedstock for coke in blast furnace operations
Thank you for watching! It is such a thrill to know that I’ve been able to share this video with others, by all accounts it never should have seen the light of day. Do you work in the steel industry?
I worked Allied Chemical's Semet-Solvay Div. coke plant in Ashland,KY in 1972 or 73, not sure. Long time ago. I ran what they called the charge car, referred to as the Larry Car here. I don't remember having to get out of the car for anything, just ran back and forth to load up and discharge. Magnetic pickup on the car removed and replaced the oven lids. The instrumentation in the car was not as sophisticated as show here.
@@onesixfive One thing I do remember is men on top of the oven pouring the sealer around the oven lids one replaced. Some of memories of this operation may be off as it was more than 50 years ago, but that's what I recall. Ashland shut down in 2011 after almost 100 years of operation. Today nothing's left but a huge vacant lot with concrete slabs where buildings once stood and railroad tracks leading to nowhere. Sad. This is a great video. Thanks for posting. I've watched it a couple times.
I don’t know that this is true. Acme had just made a massive investment at that time in the Riverdale mill. Maybe it was a “make or break” situation but this early on no one could know how it would go. Certainly the industry was on a downturn but EAF steel making was years from the proliferation of today. The industry might have been shrinking but that doesn’t mean all the players perish. Some do for sure, but those that survive get bigger.
ACME was too late with the new caster, and they couldn't have predicted the market falling due to international producers (china? russia?). ACME should have at least been ISO9000/QS9000 so they could have sold steel to the Big 3, but they were doing well with their current customers.
