Page 19 - Port of Baltimore - Issue 1 - 2023

The Port of Baltimore never sleeps. While the city’s residents stay indoors in rough winter weather or rest up after dark, the Port’s terminals are still a hive of activity.
Those who keep the Port moving “work out in the elements and rain and snow. They work out in the heat and the cold,” said Scott Cowan, President of ILA Local 333. “It’s a 24/7 operation at the pier. We’re only off for a few days a year.”
That’s a good thing because without the Port, life as we know it would come to a standstill. The Port moves just about every commodity and consumer item we use in our daily routines, whether it’s the sugar in our morning cup of coffee, the olive oil and seafood that we use to cook, the car we drive or the furniture we buy to decorate our homes.
In fact, “furniture is traditionally our largest commodity,” said Mark Schmidt, Director of Operations at Ports America Chesapeake (PAC), which operates Seagirt Marine Terminal under a public-private partnership with the Maryland Port Administration (MPA). “The Port supports Bob’s Furniture, Restoration Hardware and Costco. IKEA is probably our single biggest customer.”
Other consumer goods that move through the Port include beer — Heineken is a big shipper through Baltimore, Schmidt noted — electronics, organic grains, tires and chicken feed, metal products and finished lumber. And of course there’s roll-on/roll- off (ro/ro) cargo, which includes large construction and agricultural equipment.
To give a sense of the scale of the operation,
the Port of Baltimore handled a record $74.3 billion worth of foreign cargo in 2022. A record 765,019 tons of imported ro/ro cargo also passed through the Port’s terminals.
Despite that sizable volume, the Port of Baltimore has kept operating smoothly even through a major global crisis like COVID, said Richard P. Krueger Jr., President of ILA Local 953. “There was no interruption,” he said. “Baltimore was one of the few ports where there was no backlog for cargo being moved into
and out of the country.” For that, Krueger credits the exceptional work ethic of ILA members.
Another key factor have been recent improvements at Seagirt, which include an appointment scheduling system, new entry and exit gates as well as 15 additional rubber-tired gantry (RTG) cranes and four additional Neo-Panamax cranes.
"We have an all-hands-on-deck Port and supply chain team," said William P. Doyle, Executive Director of the MPA. "Our Port stakeholder cooperation is unmatched — including our private marine terminals, our great International Longshoremen's Association, and our superb truckers, pilots, tugs, freight forwarders and terminal operators. Nobody is better than Baltimore."
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