2/16: ALL THAT FOR THIS
What you are looking at is the final output of the Tilden mine in Marquette, Michigan. It’s a rather non-descript, ¼” ball of iron. It’s not much to look at, until you realize what it took to get there. This weekend I had the pleasure of going on a tour of the Tilden mine, and the scope of everything there is almost impossible to wrap your head around. A very basic comment a woman made when getting on the tour bus after the tour struck me as amazingly profound. Looking at those little iron balls, she said, “Wow, all of that just for these little balls.”
The tour starts in the repair shop. This, of course, is not any ordinary repair shop. Here they repair the Catapillar 797 dump trucks that are capable of hauling about 400 tons of ore per load, and are 25 feet tall, 50 feet long and 30 feet wide. They have a 1200 gallon fuel tank and a 3000 HP engine. The tires alone weigh 5 tons and are over 13 feet tall. The size of those machines was almost impossible to wrap my head around. Then I think about what it took to produce those machines….the design, the plants, the engineers, the manufacturing, the suppliers….all for those little iron balls.
Then we went to the pit. A sprawling area that is about 1000’ top to bottom and probably at least a mile in diameter and is so vast that the 797’s look like toys as they haul the ore from the bottom of the mine. Those trucks even look small next to the shovels that load the trucks in just 3 scoops.....all for those little iron balls.
Then we went to the processing plant where the ore is broken down into dust and the hematite is separated from the rock. Conveyor belts move 1000 tons of material per hour. That is a ton of material passing by every 3.6 seconds. Fifty-foot rotating and vibrating drums crush the ore, giant vats of water help separate the components, the rock is sent to waste piles and the iron is sent to kilns. The kilns are 50-foot diameter rotating drums that are 200 feet long and heated to 2000 deg F. Flux is added and the dust starts to form into balls. Balls that are too small are recirculated to get to the right size. Balls that are too big are broken down and reprocessed.....all to get the perfect size on those little iron balls.
If the balls clump together in the furnace, it must be shut down and before everything even cools, the clumps must be jackhammered apart. When something must be replaced on the drums, they actually build an entire crane AROUND the building and cut a hole in the roof to extract the section of drum that needs to be replaced, and the new part dropped through the roof and into place......all for those little iron balls.
The plant uses about 3000 MWh per day of power. An average US household uses 30 kWh per day. So, the plant uses the energy of 100,000 households per day. Millions of dollars are spent every year managing all the water run-off to ensure land contamination is minimized. Millions of tons of material are moved every year just to get to the ore. The organizational and operational scope of the facility is beyond my comprehension…all for those little iron balls.
But those little iron balls support thousands of jobs. Those little iron balls support an entire community in Marquette. Those little iron balls are some of the most sought after little iron balls in the country, as many steel mills find those as the highest quality iron pellets produced in the country. Those little iron balls then become the steel in our cars, buildings and so many other products that support our lives.
At some point in your life, you might have felt like one of those non-descript, penny a piece little iron balls….something so small that it could be overlooked as nothing important. But rest assured, you are anything BUT that. Like those little iron iballs, you probably began as just a dream in 2 people’s minds. Entire communities were developed around you, many without your knowledge, to help develop and refine you. You have faced the fire at some point in your life, fire that wasn’t meant to break you, but refine you, even if you didn’t know it at the time. You are uniquely where you are based on the circumstances of your life. Now, as that little iron ball, you are just beginning your journey to something amazing. You had to be refined from raw material to prepare you for the journey ahead. Maybe your mission is to be a great parent, maybe it’s to serve society, maybe it’s to be a business, political or religious leader, or maybe it’s to simply be someone’s greatest friend, a friend that maybe saves their life or changes the direction of their life. Whatever it is, embrace the little iron ball that you have become, because you do have greatness inside you, just waiting for the right purpose.
When those little balls exit the plant, if it’s winter and the lakes are frozen, they just sit there in a pile waiting for shipping lanes to open. If it’s shipping season, they are immediately loaded and put to use. If it’s the winter of your life, just know that summer will arrive. Use this time to strengthen your resolve so when summer arrives, you will be ready for action.
If you are ever in Marquette, I can’t encourage you enough to take a tour of the Tilden mine. The tour itself is worth a specific trip to Marquette. You will not be disappointed. It is a geological, engineering, and operational marvel. I have spent a good deal of time in auto manufacturing plants, and while they are technological marvels, they pale in comparison to the scope of that mine.
