-FITS, we’d like to see numbers on the private billion in investment and the thousands of to-be-hired workers. Include an answer to how much in taxes the privateers will be paying. This article lacked substance.

Here in the upstate, we’ve seen the privateers want come into an operation to shut it down and cut out competition. Now, that’s no good.

Interesting (and informed) comment. Our question remains this: If you’ve got private companies willing to put over a billion into the state’s economy and hire thousands of workers, why not let them?

-FITS

1.Vessel traffic is driven by big volume shippers, the shippers like Wal-mart, Target, Sonoco, Westvaco and Springs drive container traffic based on their annual contracts, DC, and plant placement, carriers like Maersk can just respond to customers demands. After Target,Home Depot, and other retailers built huge DC’s outside Savannah a lot of the carriers made Savannah the southeastern gateway port to the far east leaving Charleston to serve the Mid-East and India subcontentint markets which are strong lanes into the Carolinas with textiles.

2. Maersk wants the North Charleston Terminal, right now Maersk is stuck out at Wando and must truck containers from Wando to the North Charleston the rail for inland moves. Mearsk will never move to Wilmington, it’s to far up river, to small, and to far from any major shippers. Savannah is already over crowded with ships delayed in the channel and Norfolk is just to far away from most businesses.

3. Charleston is not the first port of call for a north or south bound vessel, most containers bound for the Midwest get off the vessel at the first US port of call, which is normally New York/Newark or Savannah.

4. When Charleston was flyinig high, it was cheaper to put freight on all water service from the Far East into Charleston, but a few years ago the carriers started raising all water rates making it almost equal in cost to moving containers by rail via Long Beach but it takes an extra 5-7 days. Plus a lot of shippers were only using Charleston as a backup to Long Beach in case there was a repeat of the 2002 strike that shut down west coast ports, that fear and the almost equal cost of moving a container to Charlotte or Atlanta via Long Beach vs. Charleston has taken away a lot of volume.

5.Charleston is and will always be a regional port subject to the boom and bust cycle of exported commodities and limited by how far you can truck a container before the cost exceeds using rail to the west coast or Miami.

Container volume is off around the world. What exactly is the reason that Charleston has slipped in its place of percentage of volume? Where is Maersk-Sealand going when it completely pulls out of Charleston? Is it just the union thing? These container companies are having their own problems with the sudden drop off in shipping.