Top Gun of the Docks: Shigeru Kamiakutsu, Crane Jockey

Enormous gantry cranes, 127 meters long, tower over the wharf at the Port of Yokohama. From the operator's cabins perched 50 meters above ground, crane jockeys, the rock stars of the port, orchestrate the critical work of loading and unloading vessels. Shigeru Kamiakutsu can shift around 50 containers per hour, 50% faster than the global average. But Kamiakutsu himself doesn't aim for a certain number of containers per hour. "Working as a crane jockey", he says, "is not a track meet". For him, handling the containers gently is paramount. Many of his fellow port workers are onboard the container ships during loading. They say the sound of a 40 ton container being set down roughly is like cars colliding head-on. And they can't help but flinch when each huge steel box, as it is lowered toward the deck, blots out the sun and plunges them into darkness. They are handling hundreds of containers a day like this at ultra-close range. Kamiakutsu tries to minimize their stress by setting containers down gently. He pauses just 20cm above the stack, then slowly lowers the container the rest of the way. This crane jockey puts care for his colleagues first. And that attitude fosters teamwork that results in one of the world's most efficient port gantry crane operations. It might be humanly possible to put up better numbers by driving the crane to the limit in the interests of the bottom line, but Kamiakutsu doesn't think like that. For him, efficiency at the cost of being considerate of his coworkers would be no win at all.