Barging in: how heavy metal floats up inland waterways to feed the massive maw of Nucor's steel...

The 14,000-ton Portsmouth pulls into the Port of Morehead City, the barge's belly brimming with gnarled chunks of castaway steel--the spent casings of a rapid-fire industrialized society--hauled from New Jersey by New Canaan, Conn.-based Moran Towing. Into

Business Credit Solutions

• Get a Credit Report
• Get a D&B D-U-N-S Number
• Monitor My Business Credit - FREE TRIAL!

Business Credit Advice

• Business Credit Basics
• Build My Business Credit
• Extend Credit to Customers
• Use My Credit to Get Loans

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

This load's journey is far from finished. Moran's tugboats maneuver smaller barges next to the Portsmouth. One clump of shredded steel after another is hoisted into the smaller barges for a trip inland. The Portsmouth can hold enough to fill five of them.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Then tugs spend 24 hours nudging them 191 miles through the shallow blue-green water of the Intracoastal Waterway, into Albemarle Sound and up the Chowan River, where waits an inferno that will melt each piece of steel and mingle its molecules with its mates' in heat that reaches 2,900 degrees. Charlotte-based Nucor runs this metal hell, near Tunis in Hertford County. The steel mill consumed a million tons of scrap last year. About 45% came by barge--about 35% of that through Morehead City. The rest arrived by rail or truck. The mill melts the scrap, then rolls and cuts the steel into plates.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

To get the mill--and the jobs it creates--the state agreed to give Nucor up to $161 million in tax breaks. Three years after opening, it employs 391. Average pay is $60,000 a year; Hertford's per capita income is about $21,000. And the mill helped the port through some lean years: The port's annual tonnage has fallen 44% since fiscal 2001. Without scrap, it would have been 46%. In fiscal 2003, Nucor shipments contributed $591,000--9%--of the port's revenue. The mill also has been a boon to Nucor, one of the nation's largest steel makers, with sales of $4.8 billion and earnings of $162 million in 2002. It's the only one of Nucor's 15 mills that is in North Carolina and the only one that produces steel plates, used in a variety of heavy-duty products, including bridges and rail cars. And barges.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]