He joined a long line of trucks waiting for unloading by unhurried longshoremen. As in other West Coast ports, Tacoma's exports to Asia were declining. Maersk Inc., the Danish steamship company that would take the fries to Singapore, had canceled one of its three weekly vessel calls on Tacoma. Two days later, a crane grabbed the refrigerated container containing the fries from Hutterite Circle 6 and swung it over the 62,700-ton Dagmar Maersk. Built in South Korea in 1995, the ship holds 4,323 containers and 310 refrigerated boxes.
Longshoremen handle the cargo gingerly.
Drop a carton of fries, and about one-third of the brittle frozen fingers break. Customers hate short fries. The crane driver lowered the box carefully below deck. He eased its corner pins into slots at the top of another container of fries headed for Singapore. Above it, the longshoreman placed a Sealand container of chilled fresh apples headed for Kuwait.