"They talk about transportation hubs... for what? Empty trailers?"
You see, the future of long distance transportation has long been known to be in trains and ships and it looks as if PTI as a transportation hub is simply not located in the right place. As a matter of fact: one of the reasons PTI was so quickly dropped as a possible location for Boeing was because PTI has no railroad hub
And yet in today's News & Record, Richard M. Barron writes:
"Trucks, trains and cranes — sounds like a pretty good recipe for a small child’s Christmas.
They are also the makings of a successful new international port in the heart of Greensboro.
The Norfolk Southern Railway and the Port of Virginia have teamed up to load international containers from companies around Greensboro to make worldwide shipping a lot easier."
Did you hear that, he said, successful. And it didn't cost Greensboro taxpayers a dime-- not one cent. Mr Barron goes on to write:
"There, goods from this region’s companies are lifted straight onto massive cargo ships for destinations from Europe to Vietnam.
Importers are also getting loads straight off ships back into Greensboro.
For local companies that use containers, it’s a welcome — and more affordable — option compared to trucking their cargo on highways.
“Our business has grown tremendously in the past two years, and the rail has meant a lot,” said John Beard, the president of Beard Hardwoods in Greensboro. “It has enabled us to turn our product quicker, and there’s no doubt it has helped us increase our revenue.”
What's that? Local business owners are praising it too? How could it be? The article continues, this is a homegrown North Carolina industry-- you know, the best kind:
"The shipping container is at the heart of a way to move goods called “intermodal transport.” That means a container, specially built up to 53 feet long, can be loaded with any cargo — lumber, furniture, even snack chips — at a warehouse, put on the back of a truck and sent to a port or a rail yard.
The shipping container system was developed in the 1950s by the late Malcolm McLean, a North Carolina native who operated the massive McLean Trucking company, which was based in Winston-Salem until its bankruptcy in the late 1980s.
According to a PBS website called “Who Made America?” McLean saw dock workers struggling to haul small containers of cargo onto ships.
“Wouldn’t it be great,” he said, according to the website, “if my trailer could simply be lifted up and placed on the ship?”
His idea was such a success that the Port of New York developed a special terminal for intermodal containers.
Now container ships with boxes stacked Lego-like lumber into Savannah, Ga., and Charleston, S.C., Wilmington and Norfolk, and ports throughout the world."
But here in Greensboro our elected "leaders" and economic development "gurus" continue to point to aviation-- why?
"They talk about transportation hubs... for what? Empty trailers?"
You realize the North Carolina Railroad has tracks running through East Greensboro all the way to the Port of Wilmington and several empty industrial properties with rail sidings are positioned along them. Several other industrial properties in East Greensboro could get rail sidings for an investment of about $300,000. And Wilmington is far closer than Norfork. Folks, we're talking about investments of a few Million vs the Hundreds of Millions the politicians and economic development "gurus" normally speak of.
If I were a local elected leader I'd be getting some railroad and cargo ship executives on the phone and asking them if they'd like to expand their intermodal operations via the Greensboro area, ASAP.
