If you were to ask Carol Claxton about the legendary glass ceiling, she’d likely laugh and tell you it’s under her feet.
As the first female ship-to-shore crane operator at Georgia Ports — and possibly the first in the country — Claxton spends her days atop one of the massive cranes, looking down through the cab’s glass floor as she executes the delicate maneuvers required to move cargo boxes onto and off of ships docked at Garden City Terminal.
After nearly 20 years, the enthusiasm is still there.
“I really can’t imagine doing anything else,” she said.
A native of Faulkville, Claxton had driven trucks and operated machinery before applying for a position with the port police in 1992.
“They looked at my application and told me I had the qualifications to work in the field if I wanted to consider that, so I did,” Claxton said.
She started driving the jockey trucks that pull containers around the port. A temporary employee, making $6.50 an hour, Claxton made an impression with her skills and work ethic. Within the year, she was on permanent status at more than double her starting wage.
In 1994, the port had an opening for a ship-to-shore crane operator.
“I told my boss I wanted to apply,” she said. “I think he was pretty stunned. At the time, there were only a few women doing what I was doing and working the big cranes was a huge leap from there.”
Despite his skepticism, Claxton said, her boss encouraged her to apply.
“But he told me not to get my hopes up,” she said. “He didn’t think I had enough experience to make the cut. He also told me no woman had ever applied for that position.”
The latter probably helped her make it into the training program, but the rest was pure Claxton.
“When I walked into Crane Operations the first time, it was clearly an all-male atmosphere,” she said. “When the boss said, ‘Gentlemen, this is your new trainee,’ you could see jaws dropping all around the room.
“But they are a great bunch of guys and, once they saw I was serious and willing to work as hard as they did, it was all good.”
Determined to be successful, Claxton said she worked “harder than I thought I could” during that two-year trainee program.
“I must have done something right,” she said, smiling. “I’m still here.”
Learning the job was no walk in the park.
“I think most every new crane operator feels the same way the first time they step into the crane cab and look down — way down — to the ship and the river below. It’s very intimidating,” she said.
“And that’s even before you realize you’re perched over a steel bar that moves like a pendulum, back and forth, between ship and dock — and you control everything,” she said laughing.
“It’s that first ‘What have I gotten myself into?’ feeling that is the scariest of all.”
After that, Claxton said, it’s just a matter of learning the job.
In its simplest terms, the job involves moving containers — most of them 40 feet long — off and on a cargo ship, either positioning them on flatbed trailers for transit out of the port or taking them from trailers and stacking them on the ship.
That means the swinging pendulum must be controlled to the point of placing the box precisely, with all four corners matched up.
It requires excellent eye-hand coordination and depth perception, steady nerves and “a lot of practice,” Claxton said.
“This is a job that takes years to get good at,” she said.
It also takes a gang — the term for the group of people who work each crane shift.
An average gang — a mix of GPA employees and longshoremen — consists of two operators, spelling each other every few hours, seven drivers, four workers on the ship’s deck, four on the dock and two stevedores who direct placement of the cargo.
As the port has grown, so has Claxton’s job.
“When I first started, 200 moves per 8-hour shift was considered the gold standard — the number we always strived for,” she said. “Now we often do double that or more.”
Claxton said she averages about 40 moves per hour, depending on the ship.
“The bigger the ship, the more efficient we can be,” she said. “Some of these big ships have as many as 200 moves in one below-deck cargo bay. That’s where you can move up to 60 boxes in an hour.”
On the flip side, there are the smaller ships with on-deck cranes that service ports without ship-to-shore cranes.
“For a crane operator, those ships are rocking, floating obstacle courses,” she said, laughing. “It’s hard to get efficient production working them.”
Needless to say, Claxton can’t wait for the megaships to start calling.
“It’s amazing how much this port has changed and grown just since I’ve been here,” she said.
Indeed, she’s no longer the lone female crane operator, with Lisa Tripp coming on board 10 years ago. Claxton is especially proud of paving the way.
“It just keeps getting better,” she said.
Senior business reporter Mary Carr Mayle covers the ports for the Savannah Morning News. She can be reached at 912-652-0324 or at mary.mayle@savannahnow.com.
.