377,509 Bushels: The Algoa Hauls a Record Wheat Cargo Out of Tacoma
A single tramp steamer carried the largest grain shipment ever loaded at Tacoma — 500 carloads' worth, a train three miles long — bound for Europe and a handsome profit.
The Algoa, a big tramp steamship, sailed from Tacoma last week for Europe with the largest cargo of grain ever loaded in a single bottom. It comprised 11,350 short or American tons of Washington wheat, amounting to 377,509 bushels and valued at $312,000. The state grain inspector has ascertained that the average car received here this season contained 754 bushels of wheat. This means that the cargo of the Algoa made 500 carloads. These cars would make a train three miles long, or thirty-three ordinary sized trains of fifteen cars each. The freight charges alone on the haul of the Algoa's immense cargo from the interior amounted to more than $44,000. The Algoa is chartered at the rate of 35 shillings on the ton of freight carried, at which rate she will receive £17,666, or $80,733, for delivering the cargo in Europe. At the opening of this season vessels for loading at this port were engaged as low as 22½ shillings. If that rate would enable the vessels to reach their destination free from loss or about even on the transaction, the Algoa will, on the same basis, clear about $30,000 on the trip. During her stay in Tacoma the owners of the Algoa spent fully $10,000 for supplies, nearly that amount of checks alone passing through the Pacific National Bank.
“These cars would make a train three miles long, or thirty-three ordinary sized trains of fifteen cars each.”
A century before container ships and unit trains, Puget Sound was already the funnel through which the inland Northwest's wheat reached the world. The numbers here — 500 rail cars, a three-mile train, tens of thousands in freight and supplies — read like today's port statistics, and the economics of getting a crop from the interior to a foreign buyer remain the same civic argument about who captures the value.
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