ABOARD THE M/V SEA TRADER – As the sun rose over the Port of Tampa’s deserted wharves, second mate Rusty Smith maneuvered his 278-foot ship into a berth. With a pop and hiss from the ship’s bow thrusters, the Sea Trader glided smoothly to the dock.
Longshoremen pounced on the ship, making short work of 800 tons of cargo the Sea Trader had brought from Houston.
“We’ll be gone by nine o’clock,” said Smith. “Just enough time to get a newspaper.”
Meanwhile, a local radio deejay complained about Monday morning traffic backups that would only worsen as rush hour began.
While annoying for some, that traffic represents the Sea Trader’s future. The ship is one of few container carriers running port-to-port ocean routes in the United States. The ship’s route was designed to circumvent the country’s increasingly congested highways, rails and Pacific ports.
Highway congestion in the nation’s largest cities increased 17 percent over the last decade, and shippers were roiled last year as labor shortages kept some cargo waiting for a week or more off the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, Calif.
“We are running out of infrastructure capacity,” said Pete Swan, professor of supply chain management at Penn State University. “The more you concentrate your supply chain on a single carrier, a single port or a single city, the more likely you’ll have an event that will bring dire times upon your firm.”
Today most companies depend on just-in-time delivery of goods, merchandise and parts to reduce warehousing costs. So corporations have had to figure out alternative means of shipping.
Wal-Mart is building a sprawling distribution center near the Port of Houston, which will allow the company to ship some goods through the Panama Canal, avoiding Pacific Coast ports. The Home Depot opened a nearby distribution center three years ago.
La Porte, Texas-based Osprey Line LLC, which operates the Sea Trader’s route, has built a shipping network that offers customers an all-water service from Asia to the Midwest.
The company can load goods arriving in Houston on the Sea Trader for a trip to New Orleans. From there, the company’s container barges move cargo to inland river ports, including one in suburban Chicago.
Domestic manufacturers also rely on the Sea Trader’s regular departures from Houston to Tampa and New Orleans to avoid rail and road hassles.
Rick Couch, a former terminal manager for ocean carrier Maersk Sealand, founded Osprey four years ago with an investment from Cooper/T. Smith, a privately held stevedoring company. Last year marine heavyweight Kirby Corp. purchased a one-third share of Osprey.
Osprey shipped the equivalent of 41,297 20-foot containers last year, nearly double the 2003 total.
The company booked 2004 revenue of nearly $14 million, up 18 percent from the year before.
“We are having some pretty good luck with it,” Couch said. “We’re not as flexible as a truck or train. But a lot of this stuff is going into inventory. Speed isn’t a huge concern. Consistency is.”
On its recent voyage from Houston to Tampa, the Sea Trader carried air conditioners, roofing shingles for hurricane-damaged homes and plastic resin for manufacturers.
The ship left Houston on a Friday afternoon and arrived in Tampa Monday morning, taking only a bit longer than a truck would have to cover the 635 miles.
Marc Marino, transportation manager for Goodman Global Holdings Inc., which makes Goodman and Amana air conditioners, said the Sea Trader’s reliability was key in his decision to ship air conditioners from the company’s Houston facility to customers in Florida. Meanwhile, Marino said he has 20 truckloads of air conditioners bound for other parts of the country that have been sitting in Houston for days because no trucks can be found to move them.
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