The South Carolina State Ports Authority’s new inland port in Greer put its first cargo containers on a train to Charleston on Friday, the first day the Upstate terminal worked as designed, moving containers between trucks and trains, the local news site Greer Today reported.
At 10:59 a.m., a crane lifted the first container from the South Carolina Inland Port onto a Norfolk Southern railcar for the trip to the Port of Charleston, where it will be exported, the site reported. By its count, 32 containers, some stacked two high, went onto 20 freight cars for the 212-mile run to the coast.
The terminal had been taking in containers by truck, but Friday’s train was the first time all of its pieces worked together, according to Greer Today.
“This is truly a historic day,” Greer Mayor Rick Danner said, according to Greer Today. Danner recalled saying that the day cargo first moved out of the port would be as important as the March 1 groundbreaking.
What the port is for
The inland port lets shippers in the Upstate drop off and pick up ocean containers about 212 miles from the coast and move them to and from Charleston on an overnight Norfolk Southern train instead of by truck on Interstate 26.
The authority has said the terminal sits along the Interstate 85 corridor between Charlotte and Atlanta, the fastest-growing part of the region, with more than 94 million consumers within a day’s drive. The Upstate already has the largest concentration of port users in South Carolina, the authority said when it broke ground on March 1.
Port officials expect about 40,000 containers to move through the terminal in its first year and as many as 100,000 within five years, Greer Today reported. They expect to shift about 25,000 container moves from trucks to rail in the first year.
Jim Newsome, the authority’s president and CEO, walked the site with Gov. Nikki Haley on Wednesday.
“We have to focus on innovative solutions to logistics challenges. I think we’ll look back on this as an extremely good investment,” Newsome said, according to Greer Today.
Haley said during the visit that the port shows expanding companies the state is helping them cut costs, Greer Today reported.
“It’s all about speed to market and speed to ports and how we get that done,” she said.
Rain and a higher price
The authority said at the groundbreaking that the terminal would open in September. Rain got in the way. A ports authority spokeswoman told the trade publication Furniture Today in early September that 70 rain days since the March groundbreaking had caused repeated delays and that the first containers would arrive in mid-October.
The bill grew, too. When the authority broke ground, it put the estimated cost at about $35 million. Greer Today reported this week that the price had climbed to about $50 million after the authority’s board approved another $2.7 million, raising the authority’s share to $42.6 million. Norfolk Southern’s cost is fixed at $7.5 million, according to Greer Today. The increases were blamed on weather delays and changes to the site’s topography.
The work is not finished. Construction will continue through the end of the year, Newsome said, according to Greer Today. Norfolk Southern will run a limited schedule until the port is fully serviceable, a port official told Greer Today. The rail spur into the port from the east is not finished, Greer Today reported. Earlier this month, the authority announced limited service for the rest of October and full-scale service in November, according to Greer Today.
How it is built
The paved part of the terminal covers about 40 acres, according to the authority. The design calls for two 2,600-foot working tracks tied into Norfolk Southern’s main line and 5,200 feet of storage track, with room to expand. The authority said in March that the yard would have 552 container slots.
The authority moved three rubber-tired gantry cranes from its Charleston terminals to Greer to stack containers and load trains. Illinois-based CenterPoint Properties, which developed a large inland port in Joliet, Ill., was hired to develop the site.
BMW and other customers
BMW Manufacturing Co. is the port’s anchor tenant, Greer Today reported. A $13.4 million, 400,000-square-foot BMW warehouse next to the port on Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport property is scheduled to begin operating in December or January, the site reported earlier this week.
Local officials are counting on more. Reno Deaton, executive director of the Greer Development Corp., has hosted more than 22 visits since spring from companies interested in doing business near the port, Greer Today reported.
“It gives us the opportunity to give companies an opportunity to now see it in action,” Deaton told Greer Today.
The inland port is one piece of a 10-year, $1.3 billion capital plan at the ports authority, which also covers new and existing facilities, equipment and information systems, according to the authority.
