On a steamy July morning in 2006, I accompany three men and a
woman to the gate of a Cleveland ship dock. A guard checks our
passes, waves us on, and we pull ahead to the waterfront.
Parking our cars and pickup truck, we stand and chat on the
pockmarked and cracked asphalt as another morning in a Great
Lakes port unfolds on a grand industrial scale. Tied to the dock
behind us, rising 10 stories above the parking lot, is a
656-foot, Polish-owned ocean freighter that powered into the
Lake Erie port at 6 a.m. By 9, when our group arrives,
stevedores are off-loading at a brisk pace. A towering crane
reaches time and again into the cargo hold, grabbing two rolls
of imported steel at a time, each weighing many tons. The crane
engine strains with the enormous weight, then surges and blows
black diesel exhaust out its stack. Waiting on the asphalt is a
fleet of forklifts the size of UPS vans. They race with steel
from ship to warehouse like insects hurrying from a food source
to a nest. The motors roar. The beep, bee