Page 39 - Rukert - 100th Anniversary

phosphates from hopper cars and deliver the material in tank trucks to local soap manufacturers. Rukert Terminals leased an acre of ground at 2021 South Clinton Street from the Pennsylvania Railroad for the project. Monsanto built the unloading equipment and Rukert Terminals supplied the tank trucks and labor.
Cap, who was known as energetic and tireless, rarely missed a day of work. After one of his regular trips to the bank, the banker noted that even at 70, “Cap is on the job again, full of vim and vigor.” Not one to rest on his laurels, this “port workhorse” as he was called, was constantly working to bring new cargo to Baltimore. For example, in the late 1950s,
Rukert Terminals began handling an unforgettable cargo: bagged Peruvian fishmeal used as fertilizer and animal feed. For the next decade, the company stevedored, stored and distributed more than 100,000 tons per year of fishmeal. During this period, the fishmeal odor in Cap’s office in Fells Point was described by reporter Helen Bentley as “so penetrating, it almost bowls over a stranger.”
Comments like these persisted for years but did not deter Cap. He was willing to take dirty, smelly or otherwise undesirable cargo because it brought business, not only to Rukert Terminals, but also to local bay pilots, tugboats and steamship
PART I THE RUKERT STORY
BELOW: During the late 1950s, Monsanto contracted with Rukert Terminals to handle bulk phosphates used in making soap. Here, the phosphates are being unloaded from
a hopper car into a tank truck.
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