Inland Port near Front Royal, Virginia (Source - Microsoft Research Maps)
Virginia's major ports have been consolidated into the "Port of Virginia" in order to develop and improve harbors and seaports, and promote shipment of cargo and commerce through Virginia's ports. Other cities, such as Richmond, still try to compete for business, but the state's focus is on the four ports in Norfolk, Portsmouth, Newport News... and Front Royal.
Yes, there's an "Inland Port" near Front Royal, a series of warehouses in the Shenandoah Valley. It's far from any navigable river, and it's not even on the banks of the nearby Shenadoah River - which is so slahhow that even canoes have difficulty navigating through the rock ledges. However, the Inland Port is on the Norfolk Southern rail line, allowing cargo containers to be loaded onto 18-wheel trucks and transported to markets via I-66 and I-81.
Virginia's major ports are in competition with New York to Houston - and San Diego to Vancouver on the West Coast. Manufacturers from Asia can deliver goods in a 40-foot shipping container to Los Angeles, load them on a train headed to the East Coast, and truck them to a warehouse or even directly to a retail outlet. Such multi-modal shipping can be faster than the all-water route through the Panama Canal to Norfolk, Portsmouth, or Newport News.
| from a 2004 interview1 with Edward L. Brown, president of the International Longshoremen’s Association in Hampton Roads, reflecting on changes in shipping since he started on the docks in 1956:
Since you became a longshoremen, you’ve watched the rise of the container as the primary mode of shipping. How has the switch to containerization affected the union and the workers? When I first started working all the cargo was handled by hand, piece by piece, and there was very little use of mechanical equipment. Now we’re fully automated. All of the cargo now is handled by machinery of some kind, highly sophisticated machinery. The productivity goes through the roof now. We’re able to do much more in an hour’s work than we did during those periods. In the old days, a full gang of better than 20 men making 25 tons an hour was good tonnage. Now they’re doing 2,000 tons an hour with a little better than half the men. |
The statistics are worth studying - in the numbers, you can see what comes in and what goes out through Norfolk, Newport News, Portsmouth, and the associated Virginia Inland Port (in Warren County, of all places...). In the list of the Top 20 products going through the port in 2002, notw that tobacco was imported as well as exported from Virginia. (If you're willing to "walk a mile for a Camel," someone has to import the Turkish tobacco to blend into the cigarette...)
IMPORTS (2002) |
EXPORTS (2002) |
Crude Oil |
Wood |
Salt;Sulfur;Earth;Stone |
Woodpulp, etc |
Oil (Not Crude) |
Paper & Paperboard |
Machinery |
Plastic |
Wood |
Iron & Steel |
Autos & Auto Parts |
Cereals |
Beverages |
Tobacco |
Rubber |
Machinery |
Fertilizers |
Organic Chemicals |
Furniture & Bedding |
Food Waste; Animal Feed |
Paper & Paperboard |
Meat, Fresh, Chilled & Frozen |
Plastic |
Fats and Oils |
Tobacco |
Misc Grain, Seed, Fruit |
Ceramic Products |
Misc Chemical Products |
Toys & Sports Equipment |
Autos & Auto Parts |
Petroleum Coke, Residue |
Rubber |
Organic Chemicals |
Salt;Sulfur;Earth;Stone |
Spices, Coffee & Tea |
Beverages |
Electrical Machinery |
Manmade Staple Fibers |
Iron/Steel Products |
The US Army Corps of Engineers National Waterway Network database identifies 224 Corps of Engineers Ports in and around the United States, for analytical studies of waterway performance, for compiling commodity flow statistics, and for mapping purposes. Six of them are in Virginia:
Shipping volumes of the major Virginia ports are shown in the US Army Corps of Engineers report, Tonnage for Selected U.S. Ports in 2002:
| Rank among US ports |
Port Name | Tons (1,000's) |
| 23 | Norfolk Harbor | 27,901,354 |
| 49 | Newport News | 11,300,962 |
| 134 | Richmond | 1,363,424 |
| 145 | Hopewell | 1,108,381 |
The Virginia Inland Port is a U.S. Customs-designated port of entry that is near Interstate 81 - 220 miles closer to the industrial Midwest, and on a highway corridor to the Northeast that is less clogged than Interstate 95. The Virginia Inland Port a great example of "intermodal" traffic. Containers that arrive via ship at Norfolk are lifted by cranes onto railroad cars, then caried by the Norfolk Southern railroad to the Shenandoah Valley. There the containers are lifted off the railroad cars and placed on the chassis of 18-wheeler trucks, which carry the load to the final destination. Obviously the railroad would like to carry the load all the way, but in many cases the Norfolk Southern does not serve the ultimate destination - and many facilities are not on a rail line.
all of Virginia's ports are east of the Piedmont (except for the railroad-based "port" in Front Royal)
Virginia's ports in the Coastal Plain are concentrated in or near Hampton Roads
industries between Hampton Roads and Richmond import chemicals and other products directly to factory wharfs
