Containers pile up as imports from China soar

• Article
• Comments ()
• Click-2-Listen
• Videos

By

NORFOLK -- The hundreds of empty containers stacked beside the rails near the Norfolk Southern Corp. Portlock rail yard in Chesapeake look ready to board ship here and head back to China, but they are going nowhere.

China is shipping so many goods to the United States that the Chinese often find it cheaper to build new containers with low-cost labor and leave their empty ones in the United States than send them home empty.

"These containers are here to stay," Portlock trainmaster Brian Stanley said, pointing at the piles.

The empty containers reflect the changing shape of the U.S. economy as manufacturing goes overseas. Shippers, railroads and real estate companies are scrambling to deal with the fundamental question of how to deal with an increasing flow of shipping containers.

Concerned about strained capacity at West Coast ports, shipping companies are looking to East Coast ports for additional routes into the U.S. market.

No port is likely to challenge the dominance of the vast complex at Los Angeles-Long Beach, but as imports have seen annual double-digit growth for three years, other U.S. ports want to provide additional routes for the growth still to come.

Danish shipping and oil group A.P. Moeller-Maersk -- the largest shipper of goods for U.S. retail giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc. -- is sinking $450 million into expanding its Portsmouth, Va., port terminal to do just that.

The project is expected to be a boon for Portsmouth, but also for railroads such as Norfolk Southern and real estate companies such as Duke Realty Corp., which is developing a site for distribution more than 1,000 miles inland by train, outside Columbus, Ohio.

"We expect significant growth from this terminal," Norfolk Southern Chief Executive Officer Wick Moorman said.

The Maersk Portsmouth project involves dredging the sea bottom to increase the depth to 55 feet.