Philadelphia’s ports ranked as the fastest in North America for the third year in a row, according to the latest annual Container Port Performance Index, sponsored by the World Bank and Standard & Poor’s as a way to encourage improvements to terminals that handle global trade and pack goods moving from the ocean to road and rail for delivery.
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The survey gave Philadelphia the highest ranking of more than 50 ports in the United States, Canada, and Central America.
Boston and Jacksonville, Fla., ranked second and third. Philadelphia’s nearest neighbors — the New York area and Baltimore ports — ranked far behind. The list measures the time ships spend at port berths, the time from a ship docks until it is unloaded, crane availability, ship size, and other measures.
No North America port ranked among the 20 fastest of more than 200 surveyed worldwide. That list was dominated by ports in China and other parts of East Asia, in Arab and North African countries, plus Algeciras, Spain, and Posorja, Ecuador.
“This sometimes looks like chaos, but it’s organized chaos. It’s about teamwork,” said Boise Butler, president of Local 1291 of the International Longshoreman’s Association.
ILA is the main East Coast port labor union group, claiming more than 1,400 members on the Philadelphia docks, plus more in South Jersey and Wilmington.
Philadelphia ports are some of the most flexible, offering shippers start times, on average, every hour from 7 a.m. until 1 a.m. the next day, and guaranteeing that Longshoremen and truckers will show up to take off loads, said Richard Lazer, the port’s new chief executive officer and executive director.
Butler said Philadelphia had long ago expanded its hours to attract shippers who were concerned that the terminals far up the Delaware estuary were more vulnerable to any delays.
Lazer credited “our very skilled labor” for handling large loads efficiently with minimum damage reports, according to commodity and container shippers.
It is premium work. The Longshoremen’s contract currently pays experienced workers $50 an hour, rising to $54 in October, with overtime pay after five hours, Butler said. “If they’re not making $200,000 after five or six years, something’s wrong.”
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But the ranking is “not just about labor,” Butler said. “It starts with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, what they have built, and their vision for this port.”
Leo Holt, whose family-owned shipping company operates on the Packer Avenue docks and at its own Gloucester City port terminals, said the latest high score is “credit to all parties.”
“It’s a partnership between labor and management that has taken a long time to refine,” Holt said, referring to last year’s report, which also put Philly at the top of North American ports. “We work hard at it.”
Butler said the port needs to expand beyond the recent record hauls of nearly 1 million containers a year if it is to challenge ports like Savannah, Ga., which he said shipped five times as many containers.
“We need more warehouses,” Butler said.
The state built or helped finance many of the port’s improvements and has pledged to lead expansion into part of the former Philadelphia Naval Base and the Norfolk Southern freight yard in South Philadelphia. Four cranes larger than any currently on the area dock and two new 1,000-foot berths are planned, Lazer said.
Philadelphia cargoes through the Tioga Marine Terminal near the Betsy Ross Bridge include wood pulp and cocoa beans moved and, recently, ship propellers and sheet and structural steel imported by Korean industrial giant Hanwha for transfer by barge back down the Delaware to Hanwha Philly Shipyard.
The five main Packer Avenue piers and nearby berths that once handled iron and coal now ship fertilizer and cement. Korean cars from Hyundai and Kia land in South Philadelphia.
South American fruit, which once formed a significant part of the Philadelphia and Wilmington port totals, now goes mostly to ports in New Jersey, Butler said.
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