page_title: William L. Mercereau
section_title: Early life and education
hierarchical_section_title: William L. Mercereau / Early life and education
caption_attribution_description: English: Digital Image Number: I0003382.jpg Title: Dominion Salt workers loading salt into rail car Date: 1909 Creator: John Boyd Format: Black and white print Reference Code: C 7-3 Item Reference Code: 1977 Subject: LABORERS,Salt industry,Loading docks
context_page_description: William L. Mercereau was an American design engineer and business manager of train ferries for the Pere Marquette Railway. He supervised their railroad-over-water system of train ferries as the largest carferry system in the world. His home port for thirty years of his fleet of steel carferries was Ludington, Michigan. The ferries were each given a specific individual number with the name S.S. Pere Marquette.
  Mercereau developed the technology of loading a complete railroad car full of freight directly onto ships as one unit. The old fashion technology previously involved transferring bulk material from railroad cars to steamship vessel holding tanks and back again at its final destination. The break-bulk transfer involved crews of laborers at both the loading and unloading points. That was a costly time-consuming process that was inefficient for profits.
context_section_description: Mercereau was born at Union, New York, on June 9, 1866. As a boy of fourteen he worked part-time in a drug store in his hometown. When he was 18 in 1884 he went to Montana and Idaho, where he worked in drug stores as a general laborer. He later moved back east to Saginaw, Michigan. There as a young man of 105 pounds (48 kg) he started as a coal stoker on locomotives for the Flint and Pere Marquette Railroad. After a little more than a year at this job he had increased his weight by 20 pounds (9.1 kg).  
  Mercereau then took on a job associated with bulk shipping of material in steamships which the railroad company operated out of Ludington, Michigan. He was a ship's clerk working out of the company's office at Bay City, Michigan. His first steamship he worked on was the break-bulk steamship Pere Marquette No. 2, that carried large quantities of salt in bulk. He later worked on the steamships Pere Marquette No. 3 and No. 5 for some time. These vessels were handled by freight crews that took the material off railroad boxcars and transferred it into the bulk carrier vessel tanks to be shipped across Lake Michigan to Wisconsin. There another freight crew would unload the steamship vessel tanks and transfer back onto railroad cars. This was a costly, labor-intensive, time-consuming process for each break-bulk transfer that took away profits.  
  Mercereau quit working for the railroad company after a couple of years and went to college in St. Louis, Missouri, to get a business degree. After graduation he returned to Saginaw in 1897 and became an assistant manager in the railroad company's main office. In August, 1898, he was promoted as assistant to the superintendent of marine operations at Ludington. After a few months on the job he took over the position of the previous superintendent.
caption: Loading salt into a Pere Marquette Railway freight boxcar for shipping and transporting
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