The Port of Virginia

Remember when trucks came in all shapes and sizes, and railroads ran on different gauges?   Over the last fifty years all that’s changed.  Manufactured goods are shipped in standard size containers that can be moved from rail to truck to ship.  Ships are larger than ever before and designed to carry as many containers as economically as possible. Ports not only have to be safe from the weather, but very deep to accommodate enormous cargo ships.

Virginia isn’t new to international trade.  In fact, the colony of Virginia survived because John Rolfe came up with a product that could sell across the world: tobacco.  By 1620, only thirteen years after the settlers landed in 1607, Virginia shipped some 40,000 pounds of tobacco to England at world market prices.   Virginia’s wealth depended on trade, and it still occupies an important place in our economy.

Today the port of Virginia is the fifth largest in the nation, and is responsible for 345,000 jobs, about nine per cent of the state’s work force. It generates $41 billion in revenues and $1.2 billion in state and local taxes. It operates four terminals, three in Hampton Roads, including marine terminal facilities in Newport News, Portsmouth and Norfolk, and an inland port in Front Royal.  The inland port is part of a Foreign Trade Zone, where merchandise may enter without formal Customs entry or payment of Customs duties or government excise taxes. The Port of Virginia Foreign Trade Zone is one of the largest in the country.

Virginia’s ports are the deepest and equipped with the largest cranes on the east coast. These cranes load and unload containers off vast cargo vessels while the port’s terminals store the containers until they’re ready to be shipped by truck or train to various destinations.

Figure 1 .  Cranes and Containers at Norfolk Marine Facility

Cranes are on the land as well as on the ships, to facilitate the unloading process.

Figure 2.  Cargo Ship and Cranes in Norfolk Harbor

Virginia’s international trade has grown substantially partly due to the West Coast longshoreman’s strike of 2002.  At that time, most goods imported in to the United States from Asia were unloaded at west coast ports and shipped by rail to the east.  The strike interrupted the flow of goods to east coast retailers, particularly toys to Wal-Mart for the Christmas season.

Wal-Mart decided to establish a more direct route to the eastern part of the country. Imports from China were shipped through the Panama Canal directly to Norfolk, and to east coast distribution centers.  Other international companies soon followed Wal-Mart’s lead.

Figure 3. Cargo Ship Loaded with Containers in the Panama Canal

Today, Virginia has distribution facilities for Wal-Mart, Ace Hardware, Ford, Home Depot, Best Buy and other importing companies:

Figure 4. Distribution Facilities in Virginia

Virginia is the most northern port that is freeze-free.  For that reason, many imports are beverages, especially beers and waters.  Most imports into Virginia are manufactured goods; most exports are agricultural products and lumber.  For both imports and exports, China is our largest trading partner.  The port’s trade balance was 57% exports and 43 %imports in 2008.

International trade has declined due to the current recession. Tonnage in August 2009 was down 19.2 per cent compared to the same month in 2008 for the port of Virginia.

International trade in Virginia has caused much road congestion.  The situation brings to mind Ogden Nash’s “Song of the Open Road”:

“I think that I will never see

a billboard lovely as a tree.

Indeed, unless the billboards fall

I’ll never see a tree at all.”