PORTAGE, Ind. — Forest View, Illinois-based metals supplier BL Duke has planted a new scrap-and-logistics base in Portage to serve Northwest Indiana’s steel corridor, including a dedicated program moving more than 20 loads a day between U.S. Steel’s Portage mill and other Indiana facilities, the company said in an April 7 announcement also covered by Recycling Today.

President Lou Plucinski framed the expansion as a proximity play in one of the country’s densest mill markets. “This expansion is about being closer to our customers and building the infrastructure needed to support their operations long-term,” Plucinski said. “Northwest Indiana is one of the most important manufacturing regions in the country, and establishing a presence in Portage allows us to move faster, operate more efficiently, and deliver the level of service our customers depend on every day.”

Key facts

The Portage site is more than a parking lot for bins. BL Duke said it committed a dedicated heavy-haul truck fleet, 35 roll-off containers and trailers, a full-time driver team for round-the-clock operations, specialized material-handling and processing gear, and an on-site maintenance shop. Recycling Today reported the Indiana move was made possible in part by an agreement to ship recycled steel to U.S. Steel’s Portage location, and that the company now lists Portage alongside its Illinois yards in Forest View and Joliet.

That mix — mill-direct ferrous supply plus controlled trucking — matters in a Region where blast furnaces, electric furnaces, and service centers live or die on scrap timing. BL Duke describes itself as a mill-direct supplier of ferrous and nonferrous metals and said the Portage program also supports service-center customers through the same 24/7 logistics backbone. For manufacturers, the company pitched faster response times, more equipment availability, tighter freight control, and a local partner scaled for high-volume mill work.

The Portage toehold sits on a longer multimodal buildout. BL Duke said recent years brought Class I rail access, company-owned barges and railcars, and the 2022 acquisition of Gilbert Trucking, lifting the fleet past 110 trucks. Recycling Today echoed that truck-rail-barge stack as the infrastructure story behind the Indiana expansion. In a lakeshore economy where Ports of Indiana-Burns Harbor, Norfolk Southern, the Indiana Harbor Belt, and I-80/94 already stitch steel to the Midwest, a scrap hauler with its own yard next to U.S. Steel’s Portage operations is another node in the same network.

Northwest Indiana’s steel employers — U.S. Steel, Cleveland-Cliffs, and the service centers that cut and ship coil — have spent 2025–26 talking CapEx, hiring pools, and contract fights. Scrap logistics rarely makes the headline, but it is the bloodstream those mills need when furnaces are hot. BL Duke’s claim is operational rather than speculative: more than 20 daily loads, a staffed yard, and a maintenance bay meant to keep trailers and trucks on cycle.

Company releases are not third-party audits. Load counts, fleet sizes, and “24/7” staffing should be read as BL Duke’s description of the Portage program, corroborated in industry press by Recycling Today’s summary of the U.S. Steel supply link and asset list. A draft-time check of Region News Source found no matching BL Duke Portage package; RNS hits for Portage/Burns Harbor in recent months were crime and weather items, not scrap-yard expansions.

For Local drivers, diesel techs, and material handlers, the practical question is hiring and shift patterns at the new yard — details BL Duke’s April notice did not quantify as permanent headcount. For mill buyers, the question is whether a dedicated Portage base shortens the gap between a scrap call and a loaded truck at the scale gate.

Related reading