BY MARK B. SOLOMON, EXECUTIVE EDITOR–NEWS
THE DC VELOCITY Q&A thoughtleaders
Curtis Foltz, who steps
down June 30 as head
of the Georgia Ports
Authority, proved that
the negatives of low
drafts could be
surmounted if you did
everything else right.
UP-AND-COMING PORT OPERATIONS EXECUTIVES COULD DO FAR
worse than plying their trade under the wing of Curtis J. Foltz. Under his leadership, the Georgia ports of Savannah and Brunswick played the cards that Mother
Nature dealt—namely, a shallow 42-foot channel draft—and won the hand. The
Savannah container port has prospered on the back of a superb logistics infrastructure and what many users regard as superior customer service that treated
stakeholders like, well, stakeholders. Its Garden City Terminal has become the
country’s fourth-busiest container facility and the busiest single-terminal operation in the U.S. It has the largest cluster of import distribution centers on the
East Coast, on-deck access to the large Eastern railroads CSX Corp. and Norfolk
Southern Corp., and the advantages of close proximity to Interstate 95, running
north to south, and I- 16, running east to west. Savannah is the country’s sec-ond-largest export container port, exceeded only by the Port of Los Angeles.
“Perhaps Curtis’s greatest contribution was to serve, and bring together, all
his diverse constituencies so well—shippers, carriers, BCOs [beneficial cargo
owners], labor, Georgians, and for that matter, the whole region,” said Mark Q.
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Shallow waters,
deep legacy
INTERVIEW WITH CURTIS J. FOLTZ
Shallow waters,
deep legacy
