Page 23 - Port of Baltimore Magazine July August 2011
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they will come’ entrepreneurship,” Coulter said.
The company’s most visible cargo is seen by thousands of drivers
every day on I-95 as they pass the mountains of road salt that Rukert
unloads and stores. “We put a half million tons of road salt in every
year,” Coulter said. “When we nearly ran out in the blizzard [during
the winter of 2010], ships were loaded in the Bahamas and we got
it in two to three days. We literally loaded it right off the ships into
dump trucks that went to the salt domes.”
Rukert’s 130-acre facility includes five berths, 23 warehouses
providing one million square feet of inside storage space, and 60
acres of outside storage space.
While preparing to celebrate its 90th birthday, the company
is well positioned for the future, thanks to a 50-foot berth and
reinforced terminal with a 2,000-pounds-per-square-foot capacity.
The terminal was built for a 500-ton mobile crane.
One section — called Lazaretto, which means “fever hospital,”
since it was once the site of a 19th-century hospital that quarantined
malaria victims — has the Fort McHenry tunnel running underneath
it, carrying traffic along I-95. The company had to limit operations
for five years during the tunnel’s construction in the late 1970s, but
once again “Rukert luck” triumphed. Norm Rukert had convinced his
father to spend an extra 10 percent — $100,000 on a million-dollar
berth — to reinforce Pier 5 with crane beams when it was built. The
company built a high-speed bulk crane, and never looked back.
The company traces its roots to 1921, when William George
“Cap” Rukert and his brother George started a storage company
that evolved into a maritime company within a decade. In the
1950s and ’60s, the company expanded into Canton for deeper water.
The company owns the land, unlike many terminal companies.
“We’re really fortunate in that the main channel runs right along
the berth,” Coulter said.
Coulter joked that he is a “gap-filler” between generations. After
50 years in the company, Norm Rukert Jr. is still actively involved
at the age of 70. Meanwhile, Shaun Rukert and Andy Nixon, Cap’s
great grandsons, are vice presidents. But they weren’t automatically
handed a top job — they worked their way up through a 10-year
program involving hands-on labor.
“Everybody here saw them go through that,” Coulter said,
adding that the next generation of potential terminal managers is
just 10 years away from entering into the same program. Coulter
is contributing some family tradition, too: two college-age sons
work in the warehouse during summer break.
Rukert Terminals Corp. plans to celebrate its 90th birthday with a
customer party in September at the Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers
Maritime Park in Fells Point; guests are expected fromall over theworld.
“Rukert is one of the bedrock companies at the Port of
Baltimore,” said Maryland Port Administration (MPA) Executive
Director James J. White. “One of the reasons for their long-term
success has been their consistent and steady family-owned
management structure, going back to the days of Cap and George
Rukert and continuing today under Norm and John Coulter. Though
they handle many different bulk commodities, they’re probably
known best for supplying Maryland and its neighboring states
with road salt that makes highways and other roads passable
during the winter months. I look forward to many more years of
seeing Rukert’s continued growth at the Port of Baltimore.”
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