Take a riverboat cruise with Caitlin Murphy and she’ll geek out—and not about the typical touristy sites along the river. While you’re pointing out the Arch like a townie, the 35-year-old CEO of Global Gateway Logistics is eyeing the grain augers and the barges that are loaded with corn, fertilizer, and soybeans and floating down the Mississippi to New Orleans, and eventually overseas. But Murphy has another vision for the river.
Murphy works in global freight forwarding, helping clients pick trade routes and carriers, and navigating customs. When COVID-19 hit, her customers faced delays from port congestion, factory shutdowns overseas, and rail disruption. “Clients of ours have containers that sit for over a month in Los Angeles, just waiting to get on the railroad,” Murphy says.
Gov. Mike Parson appointed Murphy to the Missouri Supply Chain Task Force, and at the end of six months, one of her recommendations was what she calls a “revolutionized mode of transport”: container-on-vessel shipping. That means putting finished goods into containers and loading those onto special ships that can navigate the waterways faster than a barge and as an alternative to rail or trucking. Murphy believes that this mode of transportation could transform the rivers and ease some supply-chain pains.
Amanda Weber
Mary Lamie does, too. Since 2017, way before COVID-19 disruptions, the executive vice president of St. Louis Regional Freightway has been exploring the concept, which led to an opportunity to work with Florida-based company American Patriot Holdings on the innovative container-on-vessel service. The Freightway is now partnering with Gulf Coast ports in southern Louisiana, including the Port of New Orleans and Port of Plaquemines, to build a hub-and-spoke transportation and logistics system. The hub would be located just south of St. Louis, in Herculaneum. Containers would be loaded onto a special vessel that would ultimately travel to international ports in Asia and Europe. In May, the Jefferson County Port Authority received a $25 million grant from the state to develop a container facility at the port. APH is building the ships, which would hold 1,800–2,000 containers per vessel (rail can transport about 300–400), plus another vessel that could travel tributaries, to go even farther inland. Service could begin as early as 2024.
The benefits of a container-on-vessel system, Lamie says, are potential cost savings and greater reliability for companies, as well as breathing new life into our underutilized waterways. She’s also hoping it leads to “transformational job creation,” possibly attracting manufacturers the way the mega ports of Savannah, Georgia, or New Orleans have been able to do. The biggest challenge, Lamie says, is spreading the word to
St. Louis companies that this will be an option and making sure that the workforce is ready to support the development around the port.
Why hasn’t this option been explored before? One reason, Lamie says, is that, for the service to be successful, St. Louis needed buy-in and collaboration from other ports in the Midwest and South. “Just having those vessels coming back and forth to the St. Louis area doesn’t work,” she says.
For Murphy, a service like this is also about helping St. Louis progress as a global city. The
St. Louis native moved home from Beijing to begin her career in logistics, but what drove her to get involved with the container-on-vessel project was a desire to see St. Louis grow. “It’s a unique idea to utilize this incredible waterway and revolutionize it to today’s trading world,” she says.
FYI: Learn more about Murphy’s company at shipglobalgateway.com / Learn more about the St. Louis Regional Freightway at thefreightway.com.
MORE TO KNOW
LARGE AND IN BARGE
THE AG COAST OF AMERICA BY THE NUMBERS
You might not know it, but you are, in fact, a coastal resident. That’s because the 15-mile stretch of the Mississippi River near St. Louis is known as the Ag Coast of America. If you were to draw a 500-mile radius around the St. Louis region, you’d find that 50 percent of the crops and livestock grown and raised in the United States are produced inside that circle. Here’s more about the barge system that transfers those goods via the river.
3 The St. Louis Regional Freightway’s port system is the country’s third-largest inland port system.
105 million Tons of cargo that move through the region annually
200+ Private terminals operating within our region’s port system
150 Barges that the port system can handle daily
