Scan Partner discharge at Lake Superior Warehousing Co. Inc Duluth, Minnesota

The Scan Partner arrived in Duluth on Friday evening, August 17, 2001, ...


... amidst a driving rainstorm. In her trip through the St. Lawrence Seaway, she had already discharged heavy cargo in Detroit that she picked up in Germany, and loaded cargo in Milwaukee. She was here to discharge 13 pieces of a giant tunnel boring machine that will be used to drill two tunnels under the Minneapolis St. Paul Airport. The two tunnels will form an underground link in an otherwise above ground light rail transit route there.
At 331 feet long, the ship, built in 1997, is specially designed to handle large pieces of equipment in international transit. She has two on-board cranes that are reinforced for heavy duty lifting, although local cranes did all the work in this case. It is also called a roll-on/roll-off general cargo vessel, with a door at the stern that can be lowered for direct cargo loading.


Schenker International was chosen to handle logistics for the project due to the company's worldwide experience with project cargo.

Schenker has more than 650 offices and employs more than 20,000 people.

Herrenknecht AG, located in Germany, built the tunneling machine that is being transported to Minneapolis. This particular one was last used on a subway project in Singapore. They supplied the picture just above.

This is the inside view of the business end of the boring machine. Inside the 500 ton machine, about twelve people will operate the machine, moving it about 70 feet a day. As they dig the tunnel ahead of them, they will be laying preformed concrete behind them as they go, erecting the walls of the tunnel as they dig it. When they get to the end of the first tunnel, the machine will be disassembled and carried back to the start. There it will be reassembled. The second tunnel, right beside the first, will then be dug and built. Taking the machine apart will last about a week, with another week needed to rebuild it.