That banana you ate for breakfast had quite an adventure on its way from a tree in Ecuador to your kitchen. A good part of it was in a high-tech temperature controlled shipping container, followed by a week's stay in a land-based "forced ripening" center. The air inside, plus small amounts of banana-ripening gases, is kept at a temperature of between 55 and 65 degrees F. Only then are they trucked to your local Kroger and put out for sale.

A couple of centuries ago, astute business leaders appreciated the unique qualities of Savannah’s coastal location where the Savannah River separates our historic Georgia city from the southern tip of South Carolina. Founded in 1733, Savannah had already developed into a prosperous Atlantic port city by time of the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War. The Royal Navy quickly captured this strategic outpost; British troops occupied Savannah until July, 1782.

Like your industry, the logistics world saw some big changes in 2018, with more on the horizon for 2019. By way of review, here are a few of the things we're keeping an eye on:

Working with superior single source logistics partners will increase your profits. It will also improve your internal employee job satisfaction levels, speed up delivery times to your end users, improve customer service, allow for quick adaptation to the ever-changing market and provide you with a competitive advantage. The right shippers and 3PL partnerships will improve your bottom line because they are able to offer certain services that would cost your business too much to be comfortably profitable.

It’s a Wonderful Life- for Port City Logistics here at the Port of Savannah

Imagine life in Savannah without the Port and the businesses that support it. You certainly wouldn’t see news like this, reported in a recent editorial in Savannah Now.

It used to be that most cargo theft targets were always high-priced items. By today’s standards, such items would equate to electronic goods, such as laptops, tablets, smartphones, etc. While these items are still highly targeted goods, it is also important to understand that other goods have become bigger targets since the economic recession of 2008. Now, cargo criminals will target any items they can sell for a decent profit margin. This includes energy drinks, frozen seafood or meat, pharmaceuticals, home and garden items, construction materials, auto parts, clothing and shoes, metals, personal care products and tobacco.

Eliminate profit-killing inefficiencies in your business by looking at your shipping process. Warehousing and transportation involve many moving parts that are hard to streamline without significant outlay—but savings are possible with the right solutions.

Those container ships you see coming up the Savannah river look gigantic, but wait until you see the size of the New-Panamax ships that will steam upriver after the harbor expansion project is complete. If you counted the number of shipping containers on the current Panamax vessels, it's no more that 5,000. New Panamaxers carry up to 13,000. A fully loaded ship of that size needs a deeper channel.

Maybe you’ve seen the UAVs on the news- Unmanned Aerial Vehicles used by the military to provide reconnaissance and sometimes actual mayhem-producing missiles fired from a clear blue sky. Did you you know that UAVs flying over hot spots in the middle east are piloted by people right here in places like North Dakota and Nevada.

The shipping industry plays a critical role in globally intertwined economies as producers rely on the industry to move freight from manufacturer to consumer. Even as the logistics industry booms here in Savannah and many other port locations around the world, challenges have not gone away. Port City Logistics is part of a larger effort to engineer solutions to both pressing immediate problems and long term issues, such as...