From the Journal of Commerce

The Surface Transportation Board has granted its permission for motor carriers to use co-op pools to acquire and share intermodal chassis.

The STB’s regulatory clearance brings the North American Chassis Pool Cooperative a step closer to operation. The NACPC was formed last October as a cooperative for drayage carriers that want to buy chassis for sharing in pools.

The co-op’s members are a small group of motor carrier companies that are also members of the ATA’s Intermodal Motor Carriers Conference.

Under federal law governing motor carriers, STB approval is required before motor carriers may “pool or divide traffic or services or any part of their earnings.”

The NACPC is the first motor carrier entity to seek and gain approval to operate within the evolving chassis pool marketplace.

Container ship lines have been disengaging from ownership and operation of chassis in the U.S. market, and encouraging a shift toward increased motor carrier responsibility for the equipment.

Organizers of the trucker chassis co-op say motor carriers want to retain a say in managing the chassis through participation in the pool, and to upgrade the quality of equipment they use.

Last fall, IMC Companies, a member of NACPC, purchased more than 1,500 intermodal chassis from ocean carrier OOCL (USA) and put them into Consolidated Chassis Management’s Mid-South co-op pool for dedicated use by OOCL.

IMC Companies recently announced that Atlantic Intermodal Services (AIS), DNJ Intermodal Services (DNJ), Gulf Intermodal Services (GIS), Intermodal Cartage Company (IMCG) and National Drayage Services (NDS) have joined the SmartWay® Transport Partnership, an innovative collaboration between U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and industry which provides a framework to assess the environmental and energy efficiency of goods movement supply chains.

The companies will contribute to the Partnership’s savings of 1.5 billion gallons of fuel, $3.6 billion in fuel costs, 14.7 MMT of carbon dioxide (CO2), 215,000 tons of oxides of nitrogen (NOx) and 8,000 tons of particulate matter. Carbon dioxide is the most common greenhouse gas, and nitrogen oxide is an air pollutant that contributes to smog. By joining SmartWay Transport Partnership, IMC Companies demonstrates its strong environmental leadership and corporate responsibility.

“At IMC Companies, we are constantly searching for ways to provide our clients with quality service while ensuring our output minimally impacts the environment,” said IMC Companies chairman Mark H. George. “We felt our mission tied in perfectly with the goals of the SmartWay Transport Partnership, and we look forward to doing our part to reduce our carbon footprint. We are confident that this partnership will benefit the environment and, in turn, our customers for many years to come.”

Developed jointly in early 2003 by EPA and Charter Partners represented by industry stakeholders, environmental groups, American Trucking Associations and Business for Social Responsibility, this program was launched in 2004. Partners rely upon SmartWay tools and  approaches to track and reduce emissions and fuel use from goods movement. The Partnership currently has over 3,000 partners. For information about the SmartWay Transport Partnership, visit www.epa.gov/smartway.

About IMC Companies:

IMC Companies is a national network of trucking transport and support businesses, providing local and regional services of international and domestic containers; chassis and container maintenance and repair; full service container depots and secured container storage; hazardous material shipments; reefer service, fueling and protection; roadside repair services; and rail terminal operations. To learn more about IMC Companies family of brands, visit www.imccompanies.com.

From the Charleston Regional Business Journal -

Business started out slow for Atlantic Intermodal Services – even back in the heady shipping days of 2006 and 2007 – when Jeff Banton launched the Charleston based turcking company.

In retrospect, Banton’s slow start turned out to be good fortune.

After moving from Memphis, Tenn., where he was vice president of Intermodal CartageCo., to open the company, Banton spent the first couple of years trying to carve out a share of the drayage market locally and around the Southeast.

Many of his larger competitors had a hold on the shipping lines and heavy-volume customers. When Banton would make a sales pitch to those customers, all too often he got a smile and a handshake, but no deal.

So Banton instead focused on seeking out smaller customers. He worked with their brokers and freight forwarders and earned referrals within that industry.

“These guys may only ship three or four containers a month, but it’s everything to them,” Banton said.

Then the recession hit. Some of Banton’s larger and more established competitors saw their business tumble along with the volume of freight moving into and around the region. But with fewer and smaller customers, Banton did not have far to fall.

“Sometimes you make your best decisions when you have no other choice,” he said.

Other time, as his base of truck drivers grew, Banton said he was able to gain business from some larger customers as well. Early on, Atlantic Intermodal Services served about 15 total customers per week, he said. Now it serves about 60 or 70.

Banton’s career in transportation started in college when he worked for FedEx, which is headquartered in Memphis, his hometown. As a load master, his role was to calculate the center of gravity for FedEx aircraft based on the freight on board. Pilots used the information in setting flight paths, he said.

Banton said he found the work exciting and saw career potential in the transportation industry.

“I was alwasy interested in how something got from one place to another,” he said.

After graduating from the University of Memphis with a degree in logisitics, Banton continued working for FedEx until 1997, when he shifted his focus from small packages to international cargo and went to work for Intermodal Cartage Co.

In late 2005, Banton said he had the opportunity to move farther South and open Atlantic Intermodal Services as his own company under the umbrella of Intermodal Cartage Co. Banton said that relationship gives customers a broader network- about 850 trucks – while allowing his company to react with the agility of a smaller operation.

To start his company, Banton acquired existing facilities in Charleston, Savannah and Atlanta. Last year, he expanded to Jacksonville, Fla., and Charlotte.

Starting out, Banton could have located his headquarters in Charleston, Savannah, or Atlanta – the locations of the existing facilities he bought. Charleston was the obvious choice at the time.

“Back in 2005, Charleston was king of the ports, and it only made sense to move into Charleston,” Banton said. “And besides, it’s beautiful.”

In subsequent years, however, Charleston lost its crown as Savannah took away market share. Banton said that Atlantic Intermodal Services’ facility in Savannah became the catalyst for the company’s growth.

“The good news is that today’s leadership at the port (of Charleston) is reversing the trend, and Charleston is coming back pretty strong.” Banton said

With facilities in Charleston, Savannah and Jacksonville, Banton said he is ready for the increased shipping business expected on the East Coast once the expanded Panama Canal opens in the next few years. He’s hoping that port officials in Charleston and Savannah find the federal dollars needed to deepen their harbors to accommodate the larger ships.

“Everybody says the harbors need deepening,” Banton said, “Yeah, they do – both Charleston and Savannah.”

When the larger Panama Canal opens, Banton said the real competition won’t be between those port cities, despite current political wrangling.

“It’s going to be East Coast versus West Coast at that time,” he said.

From the Savannah Business Journal -

Atlantic Intermodal Services (AIS) is a company that provides intermodal transportation services, specializing in import/export cargo shipments via trucking, port-to-port drayage, local round-trip drayage and more. AIS functions under the umbrella of IMC Companies, a company that was begun in 1982 as Intermodal Cartage and which has since expanded to incorporate a nationwide network of companies to facilitate the transportation of goods entering U.S. ports from all over the world and delivering them nationwide.

Since the company was founded in 2006, Atlantic Intermodal has seen tremendous growth, with an increase in business of 20 percent from 2009 to 2010. Part of its success was due to AIS’s targeting the smaller customer, rather than the larger client. In 2008, before the economic downturn, AIS made a concerted effort to woo smaller customers so that when the financial crisis hit in early 2009, the larger customers began to lose their market share while the smaller customers remained on the whole unaffected. AIS went from serving 15 customers in a week to 60 customers per week which is a positive trend at a time when companies are finding it difficult to remain afloat.

Memphis native and AIS president Jeff Banton says of his customer base: “My niche is a one-way market. I try to take imports to the interior of the Southeast and try to return our exports from Mississippi, Alabama, back to our ports.” Savannah’s marketing in the Far East made it lucrative and attractive for large shippers to send their goods to Savannah.

“Savannah was gaining more market share than Charleston and it became a catalyst for us at AIS,” Banton told the SBJ. Banton feels that until recently, Charleston was not paying attention to Savannah’s aggressive stance and that Charleston’s new port director, Jimmy Newsom (a Savannah native and former vice president for Hapag Lloyd) has begun to implement many of the same programs in South Carolina as those that have proved successful in Georgia.

Banton feels that the super cargo ships that will be coming with 2014 and the expansion of the Panama Canal will require the use of ports on the eastern seaboard and he feels that AIS’s operations in Jacksonville, Savannah and Charleston will put him in an enviable position to deal with the future flow of goods arriving in the United States. Banton also hopes to expand AIS’s operations to other ports like Wilmington and Norfolk.

Recently Banton’s company has tripled the size of its facility in Savannah. Although headquartered in Charleston, the majority of Atlantic Intermodal’s business is done in Savannah, so extra space was required in order to accommodate all new customers. Furthermore, Banton attributes much of this growth to Savannah’s port’s friendliness and openness to business possibilities.

The SBJ recently had the opportunity to speak with Jeff Banton, president of Intermodal Atlantic, a young company that has gone after the small customer in a field which is as old as trade is dealing with transoceanic transportation. Since his days as a college student at the University of Memphis, where Banton studied business marketing and logistics, he has been fascinated by the endless connections of shipping lines and railroad transportation which linked goods from far inland on one continent to another.

In 1986 Banton began working for Intermodal Cartage with its founder, Mark George, who had the vision to start with a single truck and find ways of linking international freight and brokerage firms who needed individuals on the ground to receive goods on U.S. soil and make them reach their destination in this country.

Although Memphis remains one of the principal railway heads linking goods coming from the Far East via West Coast ports, to the rest of the U.S., Banton recognized the growing importance of port cities like Charleston, Savannah and Jacksonville for the post 2014 expansion of the Panama Canal and the impact it will have on future transportation of foreign goods to the U.S. (and U.S. goods to foreign markets). To this end, he established Atlantic Intermodal’s headquarters in Charleston in anticipation of what he hoped would be a boom. Unfortunately, the economic downturn of 2008 affected his plans, but despite this Jeff persisted. To his surprise, Jeff discovered that by catering to smaller companies he was able to weather the adversity of the times and come through stronger. To this end his company expanded by 40 percent between 2008 and 2010 and an additional 25 percent in 2011.

This Tennessee native likes to point out that there are pockets of possibilities in this trying economy where it is possible to thrive, and even, flourish. The friendliness of Savannah’s port, and its competitive streak drew him here from Charleston. That is not to say that Charleston no longer counts as one of Atlantic Intermodal’s ports, but rather that Banton has noticed that Savannah’s ambitious approach has influenced Charleston into changing its approach to business. Savannah native, Newsome, a former Hapag Lloyd VP, and now director of Charleston’s port, has applied many of Savannah’s port’s smart strategies to Charleston in order to remain competitive and offer an equally attractive business option to companies like Atlantic Intermodal.

“Savannah aggressively wooed and won many Far Eastern companies to ship their goods to Georgia, despite the long winding river course,” Banton told the SBJ. “Savannah Port has better hours and is open for business on Saturdays something neither Jacksonville or Charleston were and this made it more attractive for shippers, brokers and businesses like ours…” Banton added.

Intermodal Atlantic serves under the umbrella of, IMC Companies, which is a large multipronged business relying on a wide network of truckers, freight services and brokerage firms with transnational and transoceanic links. Atlantic Intermodal has recently set up its Savannah offices at 401 Telfair Road, next to the Amtrak Railroad lines, and in the hub of truck transportation which dominates Savannah’s transportation hub.

Atlantic Intermodal (AIS) has a crack team of dispatchers who work round the clock in order to guarantee quick delivery of goods and a swift turn around of containers and chassis. This logistics involved are elaborate on many levels and Atlantic Intermodal prides itself in offering services which are cost-effective, and time efficient despite the ever-growing increase in the cost of diesel. Atlantic Intermodal does not own a single truck, rather it relies on a fleet of 150 trucks and drivers to receive and deliver goods throughout the Southeast up to Charlotte, N.C.

Banton hopes to expand operations for Intermodal by opening future branches in Norfolk and Wilmington and also plans to maintain a strong personal hold on his employees. At the moment he has six employees in his Savannah office. Banton did not approach any of the usual business partners or guides to the city, but rather, established himself and Atlantic Intermodal, quietly and steadily at on of the major junctions of sea, land and rail transportation.

To find out more information about Atlantic Intermodal Services, please visit the IMC Companies’ Web site at www.imccompanies.com and click on “Companies” and then the “AIS” logo.

From the Savannah Morning News -

When Jeff Banton started Atlantic Intermodal Services in 2006, the shipping business was booming.

“It was a great time to start a new company,” he said. “Of course, back then, no one saw what was coming down the road.”

Back then, Banton’s fledgling company, with headquarters in Charleston and offices in Savannah and Atlanta, was jockeying to compete for customers. And because they were the new kids on the block, getting the big, established accounts was proving tough.
So AIS decided to try a different approach.

“We started going after the smaller customers, the ones who weren’t being serviced by the big companies,” Banton said. “In addition to steamship carriers, we were working with smaller freight forwarders, brokers and shippers.

“It turned out to be one of the best moves we could have made.”
By 2009, the seemingly recession-proof international shipping industry was feeling the effects of the downturn in the worldwide economy. Business was down, and many intermodal services, like all other aspects of global maritime trade, were struggling.

But while large customers were beginning to lose market share, AIS’s smaller customers were, in many cases, unaffected.

And AIS, which grew from serving 15 customers a week to 60 managed not only to hold its own, but to thrive all the way through the recession.

“We grew 40 percent in 2009, 30 percent in 2010 and are looking for 25 percent growth this year,” Banton said.

And, while he credits a good business plan and an excellent team with much of that success, the game-changer was the company’s diverse customer base, Banton said.

“We were forced to diversify in 2008 when everything was good, and it really paid off in 2009,” he said. “When the economy started to go south, a lot of the bigger companies were suddenly interested in smaller customers, but we were already locked in with them.”

In fact, AIS added an office in Charlotte in 2009 and another in Jacksonville last year. The five-year-old company has gone from eight employees to 24; from five owner-operator truck drivers to more than 50.

Although AIS, which specializes in import/export shipments, is headquartered in Charleston, it’s the Savannah port that has fueled the young company’s growth, Banton said.

That’s prompted AIS to move to a new, larger location here, trading two acres on Pine Meadow Road for a six-acre tract off Telfair Road.

“Savannah is really the heartbeat of the company,” Banton said, adding that he expected that growth to accelerate once the Panama Canal expansion opens and the Savannah harbor is deepened.

“When the canal is done, all the southeast ports are going to grow and benefit,” he said.
“I know some people think the competition is between Savannah and Charleston but, as someone with offices in both cities, I just don’t see it that way.

“In the long run, it’s East Coast versus West Coast — and every port in the Southeast is going to come out of this a winner.”

Speaking of harbor deepening, state Sen. Buddy Carter’s resolution supporting the Savannah Harbor Expansion Project was passed out of the transportation committee by unanimous vote this week and goes to the Senate for consideration.

The bi-partisan resolution, which Carter says has the support of “most, if not all those in the Senate,” is not intended to be a reaction to the resolution against the project that was passed several weeks ago in the South Carolina Senate, he said.

In fact, the Pooler Republican said, it endorses the efforts to deepen both the Savannah and Charleston harbors — and supports a new Jasper port.

“Deepwater ports in the Southeast are key gateways to international trade and must be deepened in order to prepare for the new generation of container ships that will begin to dominate ocean commerce when the expansion of the Panama Canal is completed in 2014,” he said.