Cities are great consumers of goods, and nowhere is that more true than New York. Each day, hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of goods moves into the region by ship, rail, air, or truck—much of it destined for the city. Though largely taken for granted, trade is as important to life in
New York today as it was when the city was founded.
Yet the physical manifestations of trade are now all but invisible to most New Yorkers; gone are the docks and wharves pulsing with exotic cargos. Today, trade moves much more quietly—and much more efficiently- through the region's port and airport facilities, through half a dozen rail4i freightr yards, and through a handful of wholesale markets. The occasional sight of a cargo ship steaming into port or a freight train running down the
Hudson belies a complex system of transportation logistics that underpins the commercial life of the city. another, the "merchandise trains" destined for New York contain a mix of commodities coming from numerous producers and earmarked for dozens of consumers. Thesefreight trains—some up to 120 cars in length—are environmentally friendly. On average, eachtrain Each week, roughly 1,750 replaces 280 trucks that would otherwise railcars move through be making the same journey. Unfortunately the metropolitan region— there are not more of them: rail cargo today makes up only a small but important about 5.6 percent pari of the region's freight lifeline. Each of of the freight moving through the region, these railcars represents a shipment loaded down from a high of roughly 40 percent hundreds or thousands of miles away in the early 1940s. The dropin rail traffic is and destined for consumers in the New York in part a reflection of the region's appetite area. Unlike "unit trains" made up of a for imports, but also a function of single commodity moving from oneplace to increased competition from long-distance trucking industries. The fact that rail has survived at all is due in part to a largely successful intervention on the part of the federalgovernment over 25 years ago. Once the primary means of moving goods from the west, rail service Rail had deteriorated so badly by 1976 that Washington, D.C.. stepped in tocreate the Consolidated Rail Corporation (Conrail) out of the bankrupt Penn Central Railroad and five other strugglinglines in the Northeast. Roughly S7 billion of taxpayers' money was invested in trains and track Freight repair, and in 1987—after some reasonable success—Conrail was sold to the public. Rcinvuntino Che High Line With a monopoly on freight traffic into One ofthe most talkcd-about relics of New York's rail freight era is and out of the metropolitan region, the (Manhattan's High Line, a 1.5-mile- company proved an attractive target forboth long, 30/oot-wide elevated rail Norfolk Southern and CSX railroads and deck runningfrom West 34thSt. to Gansevoort St. Now due to become the two railroads jointly purchasedConrail 1linear park, it was built inthe1930s in 1999 for S10.3 billion. Although Conrail asanattempt toreduce congestion on10thAve. For 30years,theHigh continues to exist today as a subsidiaryof tine brought food and merchandise both companies performingswitching into Manhattan—untilimprovements inhighways led toa/alio//inrail services at local yards, most Conrail assets freight in the early 1960s. were divided up between the two railroads. Oak Point Yard
Harlom River Yard J
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Fresh Pond Yard 0PP W
South Brooklyn Marine Terminal
65th Street Yard
Today, the New York-New Jersey region servingbusinesses requiringcarfloatservice; supports more than a dozen rail terminals, the South Brooklyn Railway, serving NYC served by three major railroads: the Transit's needs; the Providence £r Worcester Canadian Pacific, handling traffic to and Railroad, running from the region to from eastern Canada, and CSX and Norfolk parts of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Southern, both of whose routes lie Massachusetts; the New York Susquehanna primarily to the south and Midwest. They and Western, serving traffic between are supported by seven smaller regional upstate New York and New England and the or terminal railroads: the New York and mid-Atlantic region via a connecting line Atlantic, serving Long Island'sfreight around New York City; and the Port Jersey customers; Express Rail, serving port users; Railroad, providing local switching the New York Cross-Harbor Railroad, services in northern NewJersey. TheWorks Moving Freight » Rail Freight
There are roughly 1.3 Railcars million railcars in the United States,ofvarying shapesand sizes. Manyare highly specialized, designed to carry lumber, chemicals, forest products, BoxcarAboxcar isa fully enclosed Gondola cor Agondolacar is c low cur used to transport commodities. freight carwith uflat bottom, or autos, for example. Others are variations /i«ed sides, andnoroof. Itgenerally on standard "hopper" or "gondola" cars. carries bulk goods such as stone or steel. Hoppercars generally handle dry bulk commodities impervious to weather conditions—stone, gravel, or coal, for r • •- • example; gondola cars, either covered or
open, are used to ship heavy or bulk 1'-: = : J:.«:•' products such as scrap metal, steel, wood Tank car Tank can are used Covered hopper car Covered chips, and aggregates. Refrigerated cars, to transport liquids, compressed or hopper carsare used for handling bulk with diesel-powered cooling units, are used liquefied gases, or solids that commodities that can't get wet. areliquefied be/ore unloading. They have openings for either top or to meet the long-distance travel side loading. requirements of fresh or frozen products. Regardless of type, all railcars carry markings on their flanks. Generally these will include the car number, the railroad trademark or logo, and the name or initials of the car's owner. They will also carry abbreviations referring 10their cubic and Trilevol auto car A (rilcvcl auto Refrigerator car Alsoknown as car consists 0/ a three-level steel a "reefer,"a refrigerated car is used to weight capacity, length, width, height, and rack that holds 12 standard sedans move goods needing re/rigeration. date built. or 15 compact cars. Before theera 0/gas-powered coolers, these cars were loaded with ice.
Floats No More Prior to 2,000 cars each year between the opening of the Holland Tunnel South Brooklyn and Greenville Yards in 1927, nearly all domestic freight in Jersey City—about the same
destined for New York terminated amount that was handled each day in its rail journey in New Jersey. From 1965. Between 15 and 20 railcars there, it crossed the river on cargo can be ramped from the shore onto ferries or on carfloats, barges tracks on a waiting barge, which specially outfitted with rail tracks is hauled by a tug across the river to far cargo moving from one rail system an unloading yard. to another. At one time, dozens Most cargo, primarily for Long of carfloat bridges existed along Island customers, is of the "not in a Brooklyn's shoreline. rush" variety: tho journey takes Today, in an age of multiple truck longer but is cheaper than the routes across New York Harbor, alternative rail journey up the Hudson
only one carfloat operation remains. and across the river at Selkirk,
Known as the New York Cross- near Albany. Harbor Railroad, it moves roughly Intermodal Cargo The non'sshare Ml !)()(!••• mm of rail cargo into and out of the New York region is what's known as "intermodal" cargo; Center beam bulkhead flatcar COFC Container-on-/Iatcar (COFC) i.e., cargo moving by more than one means These carsare often used to transport service isa common sight on lumber orsheets 0/drywall, /reight trains rumbling down both of transportation. Truck trailers, for instance, which are stackedoneither sideo/a sides 0/ theHudson River. may be loaded on rail flatcars and taken center beam. long distances by train. Containers may travel the same way, moving easily between any combination of ship, rail, and truck. At least one specialized vehicle—the RoadRailer—
can move on both road and rail. Increasingly, however, intermodal traffic Special-purpose depressed Double-stack Double-stacked center flatcar These/latcars containers are placed on specially moves in containers. Thanks to special aregenerally used tohaul extremely designed low-level chassisto meet the low-level rail chassis, containers can be oversized items. 22-/eet clearances common on rail lines inparts ofthe United States. stacked on top of each other for long journeys across the country. Known as "double-stack" trains, this mode of rail travel has proved so efficient that Asian cargo headed for the New York region is often dropped off on the West Coast and completes its journey to the East Coast this way—in what has become RoadRailer The rtoadftailer is TOFC Trailer-on-/!atcar (TOFC) known as the "mini-landbridge" system. a specialized trailervehicle designed service consists 0/ trucktrailers riding to move overthe highway, but on/latcars.This system isgenerally Double-stack trains are also loaded here at the alsoto bepulled in a train. re/erred toas "piggybacking." port, and in other northern New Jersey Originally designed in 1952. it is terminals, with imports bound for eastern used bya number 0/ railroads. including Amtrak for mail service. Canada and the Midwest as well as exports.
What's in a train? As anyone who has ever waited at a grade crossing for a freight train to pass knows, these trains can be very long indeed. And that is precisely the economics that underpin rail freight: link as many different cars as possible going roughly to the same location, pulled by the same locomotive. The unusual mix of commodities that can result is represented here by the lineup of a train delivered to the New York S Atlantic Railway on August 26, 2003.
Wine Pulpboard The Works Mouing Freight
Rail Freight
Railroads' advantage Classification Yards of theyard; theswitch engine pushes the carover the hump over trucking turns on andgravity accelerates it onto its predetermined track. their ability to move many diverse shipments over a Automatically operated retarders brake each car's wheels so relatively long distance on one train. But making upa train that it couples at just the right speed to the carsalready is a cumbersome process, as no two cars may have the lined up on the track. same origin and destination. Here's where the classification Within the New York-New Jersey region,several yard comes in: cars are collected from shippers and classification yards act as part of the regional rail network. assembled into trains fortravel toa second yard, where they Oak Island, just north of Port Newark, New Jersey, is are broken up and sorted for deliveryto customers. operated by Norfolk Southern and CSX. Oak Point Yard, in Two kindsof classification yards predominate—fiat yards the Bronx, is the largest classification yard within New York and hump yards. Flat yardsconsistof a set of parallel tracks City. It servesas a classification and stagingyard for interconnected byswitches,and rely on switch engines freight rail traffic to and from Long Islandover the Hell Gate to movecars in blocksor individually. Hump yards, in Bridge. Most traffic bound for New York City from the contrast, are characterized by a track raised above the rest west moves over Selkirk Yard, just south of Albany.
Selkirk Yard Nearly all freight moving directly into New York City comes through the Selkirk Yard, located eight miles south of Albany and operated by CSX. With 70 tracks— the longest will hold 70 cars and the shortest 37—Selkirk is the largest classification yard on the East Coast.
Engine house The engine house '> where the engines are inspected Receiving yard After liw engine >•• end maintenance and repairs are removed from the train, the undertaken. It is often located remaining carsare inspected /or at thecenter oftheyard, soas not mechanical defects. todisruptthe humping activity,
Pulpbaard Propone Corn Feed t^£=5=3^ro Car repair yard fl t Mr M isthelocation 0/ light re;: Maintenance men will bedis| 1 For Local Delivery Perhaps the closest throughout the yard, generally thing New York has to a local railroad is the totracks designated by type.- hopper, New York & Atlantic (NY&A), which operates a gondola, etc. 269-mile system that primarily serves customers on Long Island. It is a recent phenomenon: until 1937, the rail freight business on Long Island (including Queens and Brooklyn) had been the purview of the Long Island Rail Road or its predecessors. At that time, NYSA, a subsidiary of the Anacostia and Pacific Railroad holding company, was awarded a 20-year concession from the MTA with the goal of reversing a 25-year decline in Long Island rail freight volume. Employing only 30 people, it runs eight trains a day (six days a week) along tracks it shares
with the commuter railroad. Its 18,000 annual carloads consist primarily of aggregates, scrap paper and metal, forest products, chemicals, and food products.
Departure yard Blocks move from theclossi/ication yard to the departureyard, wherethey are made up into trains. Car inspectors . Pulpboard Rico Flour, Bagged LOTS JU.IM I1U1IN IJALIM IHU.INI IllWIIlimUL Rail Freight How a Hump Yard Works Hump yards are most efficiently used to classify trains made up of cars going to many different destinations. The hump locomotive travels only one train length in order to "classify" or segregate the entire train. Pit As ij train leaves a receiving yard and moves toward the hump thatsignals in entrance intothe classi/tcation yard,the train rolls overa glassed-in pi: underthe trail. An inspei tor»illexamine the couplers, gears, and brakes among otherthings. s&sys/sy/x&x&fxii^^ Hump The hump isanartificial hill, generally about 20-30 feet high. A hump engine isattached tothetram and pushes the cars overthe hump at a rate 11/ y;, pi "Do Not Hump" Occasionally freight minute, down agrade 0/ between rars rumbling through the New Vorlt and4%. Some humps include a scale and region carry theadmonition "do not hump." inspection pit. These are generally curs currying fragile <:r high-value louds—liquor, bricks,glass, it delicate /ooj products, for example. Sending thesetrains "over the hump"could damage thegoods—hence thewarning. Lumber Gypsum Wallboard Soybean Oil Drick Classification yard 0n« OVCT (lie hump, cars roll into theriassi/tcaiionyard. whereeach tract is assigned a destination. As cars accumulate in the yard. }•': of similarly destined can are built. Vards are often called "bowls." as most track slopes 10the center. RcCiirder Speed meters monitor thecars i t over the hump,and this in/orinaiion ispassed to the retarder operator. This indicates justhow much to slaw the train (via mechanical retarders thatgrip each tar's wheel flanges) sothat ;) does not exceed 4 mph. Building a train Power-operated switches control the track routes /romthe 1lassi/ifution yard to the puNoui leads. One or more leads feed thedeparture yard or yards, where trainsare made up based on destination. Corn Flour Brick Birch Lumber Rail Freight Transcontinental Freight Not all that Buttranscontinental rail freight is trying to make a longago. produce comeback, with clean, refrigerated cars ("reefers") and— moving from the West Coast to New York was shipped most important—more reliable train scheduling. Though almost exclusively by rail: potatoes and onions from the cross-country rail transit times are roughly double those Northwest, fruit from California, for example. However, by road, the cost of moving by reefer is roughly half that of as trucking became more competitive and efficient (in part truck thanks to labor shortages, rising fuels costs, and due to the interstate highway system) and rail service increasing highwaycongestion. As a result, rail is making deteriorated, the tables beganto turn. Today, only a minority inroads with the moredurable types of western produce: of produce moves into the New York region by rail: carrots, onions, celery, potatoes, broccoli, and citrus fruit. Sunkist, for example, used to load more railcars in a day than it does now in a year. The Journey of a Carrot 2. Once packed, a local train • lecarandbrings it toa 3. At Roseville. engines arc classi/ication yardin Fresno. -Along withrefrigerated trains addel and the train, limited to 85cars toenable it to manage collected ,,;'several [he steep grade oftheSierra cars carrying nonpcrishables, i. At a packing shed near Nevada, departs far Bailey •ficl.l, California, workers mi- theUnion Pacific's .1. The Selkirk-bound train Northern California hub. Yardin North Platte, Nebraska forGrimmway—th, .. —the largest classi/tcution arrives at Union I'tw Roseville Bird, where it i.\ Proviso Yard west 0/1 largest carrot grower— yard in the world. At North lumd-loi.'d over ?,500 50-pOUfld coupled with another block 0/ end isthen moved bya local re/rigerated cars. Platte, the re/rigerated cars bags of carrots into a will lie combined with reefer switching railroad to a CSX yard nearby. The Union Pacific refrigerated railcor about I" loads from Idaho and Oregon .. is replaced bya CSX begin its eight-day journey and sorted into two new trains llthough the Union to tin- Bi in 1 —one headed /ur .Selkirk. New York, and theother/or engine will continue Waycross, Georgia. on the train throughout itsjourneyw Selkirk. Plastic Pellets Plywood Potatoes, Fresh Oak Flooring Boor U! 11 '^1 UJU>1MI_LJ^IJUI 11 iirM uiLlAij 11 UrM UJ14JU11 UrM UjiULIMaxt "Big Milk" To this day, rail freight buffs remember with fondness the "milk trains" —the trains that brought nearly a million gallons of milk each day into the region from farms in upstate New York. These trains ^. The train arrives at a hump carried cans of milk in special insulated cars Selkirk, where (packed with ice in the summer) to "milk "uver thehump" to become part ofa train headed south yards" in the region. Three terminated at the along the east side 0/the 60th St. Milkyard on the west side of Hudson to Oak Point Yard in the Bronx. This trainonly Manhattan, dropping off cars at the Bronx night, asitshares track Terminal Market and the 130th St. rro-North and must Milkyard in Manhattan en route; a fourth beclea' ofCroton Harmon by 4:30 a.m., when the morning terminated in VUeehawken, New Jersey. commuter rush begins. The trains generally began their rural runs in the afternoon, arriving in the city during the wee hours of the night. Tank cars for milk replaced cans around the turn of the last century: preceded milk was pumped into the 6,000-gallon car at the origin of the journey and pumped out into waiting trucks at the receiving end, where it was moved to pasteurization plants. 6. The carrot cur. along with Though the tank cars brought greater levels 19 other reefers, arrives at Oak of efficiency than the can cars, they proved Point Yard and is moved alongside a shed at nearby no match for the truck. By the 1950s, Hunts Point Market, trucks traveling on improved state highways the largest wholesale produce offered a more direct and faster haul complex in the nation. 7. Here, the car is unloaded from the country milk station to distribution and is contents JstHbuted to points in the city and "Big Milk'"s days the ultimate consignees. The cor will return to thi were numbered. Coast either empty or loaded with westbound cargo. Pulpboard Onions, Fresh Corn Starch Lumber The Works Moving Freight epicenter of this trade. Initially, it was the docks and wharves of South Street that bustled with mail and other cargo ships. Businesses sprang up along the piers to serve the trade, and longshoremen settled their families in adjacent neighborhoods. Soon, By almost any account, the network of shipping activity— New York owes its origins and the intricate web of finger piers it as a commercial center to required—spread to Manhattan's West its advantageous location Side, as well as to the Brooklyn, Hoboken, on maritime trade lanes. With one of the and Jersey City waterfronts. world's great natural harborsat its front These finger piers served as the lifcblood door and a mighty river at its back, maritime of the city and—in limes of war—the nation. trade gave rise to the youngcity in the DuringWorld War II, there were roughly eighteenth century and propelled it 750 active piers in the port—able to berth to national prominence in the nineteenth. 425 oceangoing vessels simultaneously. Theopeningof the Erie Canal in 1825 served Within two generations, however, nearly to cement its commercial position and all of them disappeared. Noevent was more by i860 nearly half of the nation's trade responsible for that transformation than moved through the Port of New York. the invention of the container in the 1950s, Fora century or so, Manhattan was the which offered tremendous efficiencies and greatly expanded maritime trade. Its demands for large tracts of open space found an outlet in the swampy backwaters of New Jersey, and within a generation the din of the working waterfront was but a memory to most New Yorkers. Maritime In the years since then, New York's maritime trade has grown dramatically— more than 80 million metric tons of cargo move through the port each year—but it is also less visible. Much of it moves over docks at the Port Newark/Elizabeth Marine Freight Terminal in New Jersey, whose 2,100 acres sit just east of Newark Airport. Supplemented by New York Container Terminal on Staten Island, Red Hook Container Terminal in Brooklyn, and a number of private marine terminals in New Jersey, the little- heralded complex serves in many ways as the economic lifeline of the region. The West Side waterfront, circa 1869. Today, New York Harbor remains The Harbor among the city's greatest assets. It covers650 milesof shoreline, reaching from the banks of Sandy Hook in New Jerseyaround Staten Island and northward along the contours of Newark Bay and the Hudson and East rivers. Although it is a natural harbor, it is not a naturally deepone—silly deposits from the Hudson, Hackensack, and Passaic riversgive it a natural depth of between 18 and 21 feet. As a result, harbor traffic must stickcarefully to a predetermined setof man-made and well- maintained navigation channels and anchorages. Port Nowark/Elizabcth, the destination for much 0/ the region's cargo, isaccessed via the narrow Kill van Kull located on the north side 0/Staten Island. The Works Mailing Freight Maritime Freight Entering the Harbor Each unofficial gateway to New York Harbor. year, The passage under the Verrazano is bul more than 12,000 ships enter or leave New oneof several tricky maneuverstoday's York Harbor. Roughly 40 percent of them cargo vessels must make before reaching port. are tankers or "drugstore ships," carrying In some places, the harbor bottom is made refined products or crude oil. Another up of soft material like sand, sill, or clay; in 45 percent are laden with containers, other places, the seabed is rock—a less destined for warehouses and distribution forgiving matter. Thecombination of sharp centers in the region. The rest are bulk or turns, wild currents, and a preponderance break-bulk(cargo consolidated into smaller, of reefs and shoals means thai only a noncontainerized units) vessels, often trained harbor pilot is allowed to guide large- carrying singleproducts such as iron, steel, ships into port: even the mostexperienced or forest products. With the exception of ship captain must relinquish the wheel tankers headed for terminals alongthe to a Sandy Hook pilot when his or her ship Arthur Kill, nearly all of them pass under reaches New York waters. • the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, the Making for Port The captain 0/theship cedes control to theSandy Hook pilot,who takes theshipthrough the Narrows and into the harbor. Askiff from the pilotboat moored offshore approaches theship, ar.d a Sandy Hook pilot climbs upa rope ladder to board thevessel entering the harbor. Ships approach from oneofthe three major shipping lanes—Barnegat (from thesouth), Hudson (from the east), or Nantucket (from thenorth). Adocking pilot takes overas theship approaches Port Newark. He or shewill guide theshipinto her berth at the port. The Invisible Pilots since 1694, when the Colonial Assembly commissioned a group of local sea captains to aid ship masters entering New York Harbor, pilots have been Tugs come alongside theship, responsible for navigating ships through New to assist in making thesharpturns necessary totravel through the York Harbor's treacherous waters. Relying Kill van Kull between Bayonne and initially on oars and sail, local pilot groups in Staten Island. New York and New Jersey competed for the patronage of the incoming vessels. A tragic accident in 188B forced New York Monitoring Waves and Tides -xy^ State to act to combine local pilot companies; Current velocities and depths in New York Harbor vary widely, seven years later, the New York and across the harbor and over the New Jersey pilots groups merged and the course ofa day. The National Ocean Service, part 0/ the Department Sandy Hook Pilots Association was born. 0/ Commerce, maintains a model to Today, a full century later, the Sandy Hook provide mariners with in/ormation Pilots still have a monopoly on this business. that can help the"n time their journey or decide which route to take. It Some 76 pilots take turns manning one is three dimensional and relies on of two large pilot boats stationed around the real-time wind and water-level data to predict water levels and clock off Sandy Hook, assisting on average currents at thousands 0/ locations 35-40 incoming or outgoing ships each day. across the harbor. And they are well trained: a seven-year » < 0.3 knots apprenticeship must be followed by seven more • 0.3-0,6 knots years of work as a deputy pilot. fr 0.6-1.0 knots > 1.0-1.3 knots > t.3 knots Maritime Freight Managing Harbor Traffic The U.S. Coast • Channel 12 serves the Arthur Kill and East River and Guard, once part is usedby the Coast Guard to administer the harbor's of the Department ofTransportation and now partof anchorages. the Department of Homeland Security, is responsible for • Channel 14 covers boats steaming through the main monitoringand coordinating New York's harbor traffic. shipping channel, including the Lower and Upper It does this largelythrough its 24-hour Vessel Traffic Service Bay, the Kill van Kull, Newark and Raritan bays, and (VTS), based at Fort Wadsworth on Staten Island. Staffed Sandy Hook Channel. by a mixof civilian and military personnel, the service In addition to coordinatingvessel movements, the Coast gathers and disseminates real-time information about marine Guard monitors and administers boat "parking" in the harbor movements via three radio frequencies: at the three federally designated anchorages at Bay Ridge • Channel 11 is provided for initial check-in, when a and Gravesend, off Brooklyn, and at Stapleton, off Staten boat isgetting under wayfrom a mooring or entering Island. Vessels are required to provide four-day advance the harbor. notice before arriving at an anchorageand are permitted to stay for a limited period of time—generally 30 days. •• 1 • ^i bvzsi f D ***i morn mm "{"j V " ^ wiscu: hch In" '"nn ° inn st m -:.•' +* 4, D D *• • J",- The Coast Guard's Vessel Tra//ic Service • 1,, monitors the location and destination 0/ a variety0/ harbor craft around theclock. Vessels »* "*« •::: ntrti labeled ingreen onthisscreen shot ) :.• •:..•',: are carrying general cargo; vessels labeled in redare carrying hazardous materials, generally petroleum. Monthly Volumes of Intra-Harbor Traffic 1ship= 100vessels Tank ships Froight/other cargo ships Tugboats Passenger and lorry boats Public vessels Vessel Types The fleet of cargo ships that ply the harbors waters are largely unrecognizable to the untrained eye. Though they can commonlybe seen at anchorage or steaming purposefully up the Hudson to Albany, few New Yorkers can differentiate one cargo ship from another. Andyet nowhere is the adage "form follows function" more true than in commercial ship design, where the contours of the ship are designed to maximize carrying capacity and facilitate loading and unloading. Workhorse of the Harbor Even landlubbers know that tugboats are the invisible workhorses behind freight movement in the harbor, and the sight of powerful tugs towing Reefers Refrigerated cargo moves in Dredgers Avariety 0/ types and or nudging inert barges of bulk ships known as "reefers." which sizes of dredge boats are in New York provide climate-controlled conditions Harbor at anygiven point in time. commodities up the Hudson or throughout a commodity's journey. involved either in maintenance East rivers is a fairly common one. Perishable commodities like meat and dredging or harbor-deepening work. fruit typically move in them. But few New Yorkers realize that even the newest and fastest cargo ships rely on tugs to help them negotiate the sharp turns that form part of the harbor's main shipping channels. For well over a century, two Irish families have dominated the tug business in New York— Container ship Container ships Car carrier Car carriers are specially originally carried a few dozen botes on designed to maximize the number the Morans and the McAllisters. thedeck 0/ a freighter or converted ofcars that can beslowed within Founded as small family tanker. Today, they are purpose-built theirwalls. Doors open and andcarryas many as 5.000 e«it ramps are designed to allow businesses in the latter part of containers above and below the deck. longshoremen to drive the new cars the nineteenth century, both are off the ship asquickly as possible. now dominant players in tawing and transport up and down the East Coast. Notwithstanding their geographic expansion, they remain fixtures in New York Harbor: today 16 Moran tugs and 20 McAllister tugs—ranging from 1,750 hp to 6,300 hp— Tankers Tankers area familiar Bulkcr Bulk ships handle a variety of sight in New York Harbor, either bulk commodities, from bananas work full time in the harbor. coming from orheading to thearea's toforest products andpaper toco//ee. oil storage facilities. Maritime Freight Dredging Basics Left to its own devices, Harbor Maintenance New York's harbor would silt up quickly, driving cargo and cruiseships toother ports. To prevent this from happening and to maintain safe channeldepths forshipping, dredging isundertaken year-round throughout the harbor. On average, some three million cubic yards of material are removed from the bottomof the harbor eachyear by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Much of this is mud or sand; the remainder is made up of clay, rock, or glacial till. In areas 0/ relatively soft material, Harbor maintenance has been an issue for New York a clamshell bucket attached to since the middle of the nineteenth century. Asclipper ships a barge-mounted craneremoves the sediment and places it onan gave way tosteamships, and ultimately to cargo ships adjacent scow, which will be towed and ocean liners that drew even more water, deeper channels to theultimate disposal site. were a necessity. Ambrose Channel, the entrance to New YorkHarbor, was first taken down to 30 feet in 1884, initiating a programof regular deepening there and in the most heavily used shipping channels throughout the harbor. of rock that must be blasted before it can be removed. Today, that deepening work continues, and an ambitious Thisdeepening project aloneinvolves the removal of an project is underway to take 40- and 45-fooi-deep stretches estimated 53 million cubicyards of sediment. Whereas along the Ambrose, Anchorage, Port Jersey, Arthur Kill, and historically this material would have routinely been placed Killvan Kull channels down to 50 feet. This deepening at the "Mud Dump" south of Sandy Hook (renamed the project is enormous in scale: it involves up to 80 pieces of Historic Area Remediation Site, or HARS), today it is carefully dredging machinery—the largest concentration ofdredging tested for contaminants and put to more beneficial use. equipment ever assembled in thiscountry. At a total cost of The mostcontaminated sediment is mixed with cement or fly nearly overtwobillion dollars, it is a veryexpensive process ash and used for landfill cover, while the cleaner and one funded in part by federal dollars. Ii is also a sediment is earmarked for shoreline stabilization or fishing complex one: much of the sea floor being deepened consists reefs, or used to capcontaminated underwaterdump sites. Harbor Depths Over Time Depth infeet 0 —, -10 - -30 - •30 - -40 - -50 - r* fcfc fl • i - ^^^_ i** *^P f' t- 1 * Li 2«PfcM rHBE Where rock ispresent, a drillboat Among other equipment. New York is isused. Holes are drilled six /eetbelow thecurrent home of"T-Rex—the therequired depth, roughly tofeet biggest barge-mounted dredge inthe apart, and then filled with Porvex, world. Its bucket holds13cubic a liquid explosive. Once the blest has yards, making it roughly thesize 0/ occurred, an excavator dredge is a garbage truck, and it can dig used to collect the loose rock and a down to 65feet. Ascreen appears in survey boat will be brought into the cab 0/ the dredger to pinpoint certify thenew depth ofthe channel. thedepth 0/ specific areas at and aroundthe dredging site. 1" The Works Moving Freight Maritime Freight Though New York is no transformed into the massive international The Port longer the nation's trade nexus it is today. dominant trade gateway, its port remains At the heart of the port's operation are the third largest in the country (after Los containers. Nearly 1,200 acres of land Angeles and Long Beach) by tonnage, are dedicated to moving them on and off accounting for about 12 percent of the ships, putting them onto railcars, or nation's maritime trade. The lion's share of storing them for movement onto a ship or this moves through the Port Authority's waiting truck. In addition to containers, Port Newark/Elizabeth Marine Terminal the port is also home to two auto preparation on Newark Bay. Now fifty years old, the centers, a bulk liquid-handling facility port complex there bears only a faint for edible fats and oils, two orange juice resemblance to its appearance at the dawn concentrate blending facilities, and of the container age, when developing a bulk cargo-handling centers for gypsum, port on 2,000 acres of NewJersey cement, scrap metal, and salt. It also swamp was considered a very speculative features on-dock rail facilities, which handle proposition. Few would have predicted the small but rapidly growing segment just how quickly or how completely this of port traffic moving to or from inland once remote backwater would be points by rail. Mapping Maritime Trade China isthe port'slargest tradingpartner, accounting foralmost 30percent 0/portactivity, Italy, Germany, Brazil and India are the next largest trade markets. Not surprisingly, as a population center, theport imports more than it exports—seven times as much. In to:al.the port'stradewas valuedat S113 billion in 2004. • Republic o'- Korea Kanrj Top Containerized Trado Partners in 20-Foot Equivalent Units (TEUs) • Export Import < 32,500 TEUs ^^— < 75,000 TELfs n_ an < 150,000 TEl/s •PjB m < 300,000 TEUs An Overview of the Port Manufacturing facilities Several manu/aauring/adlities arelocated rightat the port, including a Warehousing and distribution copper wire production plant anda The port provides warehousing wullboard plant. and distribution areas, including re/rigerated warehousing /or food products. Orange juice facilities The II two separate oral:, blending facilities. Autos The instate area is the largest auto-handling market in the United States and car carriers are regularvisitors to the port.Thetotal volume 0/vehicles handled through theport in 2004was 728.720. including small trucks, vans. SUVs, and automobiles. Containers On-dock rail Cargo increasingly moves directly from ship to rail, Orange juiceprocessing thank) CO tht introduction o/what Autos is known as "on-dock" rail/acilities ai the Eli.-ubcih Marine Terminal. Dredged material processing Nearly 300,000 containers move out Scrapmetal by railfrom theporteach year. Warehousing/distribution Edible oils Copper wire Containers The largest amount of Gypsum Owallboard acreage at theport 1 manu/acturing container terminals. Over four million rills|20-/oot equivalent units) move through the port region each any0/ themat Port 'Elizabeth. The Works Moving Freight Maritime Freight Each container lias anidentification The Container Revolution The container capacity is thetotal code, the container number. I: "cube, "or cubic measurement, combines a /our-letier character that The invention of the container in the middle identifies the owner and a seven- a container can hold.Capacity, or of the twentieth century revolutionized internal volume, is deterniit .:: identifies the multiplying theinternal dimensions container, The number can be maritime trade: bydramatically lowering 0/ the container, inclu,: /ojndon the outer andinner side 0/ transportation costs, container technology length, width, and height. 'liner. created new international markets for manufacturing goods and hence new trading partners. And yet the technology that underpins the container system is dead simple: it relies on a plain steel box, fr. order toprevent theirsliding into 20or 40 feet in length,eight feet in width, 111, containers are secured toeach other by a system of and eight and a half feet in height. Because interlocking bolts which are then the box can be moved easily from train attached to crois-tie lashings. to truck—or from truck or train to ship— without ever disturbing the contents inside, its inventioneliminated manyof the labor costs associated with the repeated handling of maritime goods. Howland Hook Reborn Containers are made 0/corrugated Unbeknownst to most New Yorkers, the metal, generally steel. The floor inside City of New York has not one but two thecontainer isgenerally made of wood. Nearly all are manu/actured container terminals. The first, the Red Hook in China. Container Terminal in Brooklyn, sits opposite Governors Island and can commonly be seen from the Staten Island Ferry or other North Atlantic Port Comparisons harbor craft. The second, New York The New York/New jersey region isby jarthelargest containerport in Container Terminal, on the northwest shore the NorthAtlantic, handling of Staten Island, is all but invisible to the more than twice asmany containers vast majority of city residents. as Nor/olk/Hampton Roads, its closest competitor. Then known as Howland Hook, the terminal was once the proud home of U.S. Lines, a company founded by Malcom McLean, the inventor of the container. But the company overbuilt and overspent, and after its S bankruptcy in 198G the terminal lay fallow for a decade. Reactivated by the Port 5 0 NEW YORK/NEW JERSEY a s NORFOLK/HAMPTON ROADS PHILADELPHIA 5 s BALTIMORE BOSTON The earliest containers were lifted Container Cranes between dock and ship by "ship's gear"— Ship-to-shoro cranes installed permanently on the deck of container crane the ship. While this avoided the expense Rubber-tired gantry cranes arecommonly used of installing cranes at each port of call, to lift containers on as cargo loads grew new ways needed to be and0//ships. Generally, theymove oncrane found to keep ships on an even keel during railinstalled along a loading. Theanswer wasthe shoreside dock's edge. crane: set into railing alonga berth, these cranes were designed to move along a ship's hull to collect or stow containers. As ships grew, so too did the cranes: modern cranes can lift containers up to 80 tons and reach across 20 rows of containers. And theyare fast—the speediest containercranes can move between 50 and 60 containers an hour. Rail-mounted gantry crano Rail-mounted gantry cranes are used in high-density stacking operations. They maximize container terminal ejfiaency by allowing for close spacing 0/containers in theyard. Authority in 1996, it is now home to New York Container Terminal. Together the Port Ship's gear Cargo in Authority and New York Container Terminal some places islifted invested over S70 million to reopen the off the dock and put in facility and are now investing another S350 the hold0/ the ship by theship's own cranes. million in new berths, cranes, and rail yards. The terminal is now the largest employer on Staten Island. The Works Moving Freight LaGuardia Airportsaccount for roughly 25 percent of the nation's air imports and 17 percent of its exports. Theoverwhelming majorityof this volume is international trade, much of it high-value or perishable goods poorly suited to the longer transit times Even less visible than associated with shipping. The air cargo industry freight trains or cargo traces its origins back to the late 1940s, when ships, air cargo is the Port Authority took over the three regional big business in the airports: LaGuardia, Newark, and Idlewild (now metropolitan region. Roughly 2.6 million JFK). Perhaps no event at the time was tons of air cargo, worth over$140 billion, more formative for the industry than the move through the three New York region Berlin Airlift which—from the summer airports eachyear,generating 85,000 of 1948 through May of 1949—moved jobs and creating $9billion in economic hundreds of thousands of tons of food and activity. Together, JFK, Newark, and millionsof tons of coal to the besieged German city.The airlift proved to the world that the large-scale movement of freight by air was possible. These early cargo movements were labor-intensive: each shipment was carried onto the plane and lied down using a series of canvas straps and nets. But just as it had done in the maritime industry, containerization would radically improve the economicsof cargo travel by air: containers offered better space utilization inside aircraft and protected shipments from damage and theft. Along with the introduction of faster and larger jet aircraft, the new technology made moving freight by air both competitive and highly desirable for valuable and perishable commodities. The rapid expansion in air freight that resulted from the introduction of the container put pressure on existing facilities at airports in New York and elsewhere. Ever since construction forthecity's The aging warehouses that had initially largest airport began onthesite 0/ theJdlewild /lirport, in i<;4?, freight handled the new form of cargo were transportation facilities there have inadequate to handle the expansion of the continued to expand. industry, and new air cargo facilities began to be constructed—generally in partnerships between a cargo carrier and the airport operator. Through the late 1960s and most of the 1970s, at JFK Airport and elsewhere, older on-airport cargo buildingsshared by multiple tenants were razed to make room for terminals for individual cargo airlines. In addition to the terminals themselves, Air Cargo Volumes The rise 0/the express/overnight carriers has new formsof container-handling equipment dramatically changed the/ortunes 0/ had to be devised. This equipment was many of.America's largest cargo airports, including those inNew York. designed to load cargo either through the Atone time,JFK was the nation's front, or nose, of the planeor along premier air cargo gateway, handling doors near the back of the fuselage. Speed 50percent 0/allgoods flown in Air Cargo Volume (20041 byair.Today its market share hasbeen of loading and reduction of labor hours cutin half, and it ranks fifth in was key to a successful loading operation, size behind Memphis, Anchorage, regardless of whether the cargo was Los Angeles, and Miami. palletized or traveling in air containers. I For a number of years, New York—in particular JFK—was the premier gateway for air cargo into North America. However, I lliiiiflfl _ _ the rise of the integrated carriers, such as Federal Express, led to dramatic changes llllllllllllllllil .• .«&• 41 ^ in the industry. These carriers controlled the A** ^ ^^^^ ..'" ^ entire logistics chain, from the time an X^>»*• envelope left a customer's hands until it reached the recipient. And they sited their major sorting facilities in locations with relatively cheap labor and airport Air Cargo Historic Volume capacity,such as Memphis. 3,000,000 The riseof the integrated carriers affected |,800.OOO the balance between the region's airports. fK InlrrnoriorialAirport JFK i.ooo.ooo With the construction of both FedEx and UPS 1.400.000 facilities there, Newark now rivals JFK 1.200.000 as a hometo air cargo. In some places in the 1.000.000 region the cargo business has grown • EWR 800.000 beyond the airport; Springfield Gardens in Queens, for example, has proved a profitable 600.000 .100,000 base for a number of air cargo companies that have developed headquarters there. JO0,O00 Aiff in LGA The Works Moving Freight lL Air Cargo Major Air Cargo Imports and Exports, 2004 Leather/Bags • iiooo metric :ons) 19.75 tons 26.93,o,|s Vegetables Machinery 26.69 I0"s 83.98 tons Electrical Machinery 51.28 tons Optic/Medical Instruments ,- 38.29 tons Optic/Medical Instruments 37.62 tons -^._ Plastic 30.63 tons Paper/Paperboard 20.41 tons EXPORTS Fish/Sea/ood 15.79 tons Electrical Machinery Books/Newspapers 76.62 tons 15.74 tons IMPORTS - Per/ume/Cosmetics 15.37 tons Misc. Chemical Products 13.45 tons Pharmaceudical products 11.47 tons Knit .Apparel 91.71 tons Woven Apparel 128.77 '"is Machinery 96.18 tons What sorts of trade, they still occur far more frequently Commodities things move by air? on the water than in the air. The simple answer is some of the most New York imports 83 percent of the expensive and delicate cargos in the world— country'sdiamonds, 55 percent of its arts and everything from Old Masters paintings to antiques, and 47 percent of its perfume and diamonds to racehorses. With cargos such as cosmetics. On the export side, the region these, time is money, and a journey by exports two-thirds of all live lobsterssent out air knocks weeks off the typical ship transit of the country and a full 40 percent of all times. Equally important to the movement seafood flown abroad by air. Unusual cargos of these cargos is security: while pilferage that have recently made an appearance and damage dropped sharply once at the region's airports include baby chicks, the container was introduced to maritime helicopters, and spacecraft parts. Air Cargo Facilities Today, the New York Of the three, JFK is the largest and most diverse cargo region's air cargo center. Its Air Cargo Center is comprised of almost three business is split largely between JFK and Newark, the latter dozen cargo-handling and cargo-service buildings as well as beinghometo many of the largest"integrated carriers" a U.S. PostOffice facility. American. Lufthansa, Korean such as Federal Express and UPS. (LaGuardia maintains a Air, Delta, Asiana and PolarAirCargo are amongthe largest small share of the market, primarily catering to short- carriers at Kennedy—and facilities are expanding. Since and medium-haul domestic services.) Some 1,000 cargo 1992, roughly 1.3 million square feet of new warehouse space companies have a presence at one or more of the three have been added at the airport. airports, employing an estimated 15,000 cargoprofessionals. Northwest Airlines Cargo An Overview of JFK rates a highly ^ cargo building 1^1 other building automated facility geared to the DHL Danzas DHJ I needs 0/us primarily Pari/ic market. a majorfreight forwarder witha presence at the airport. Nippon Cargo Air Lines Nippon Halmar Cargo Center This Korean Airlines Koran Airlines, Cargo Air lines' new cargo terminal, building provides cargo storage the largest Asian-based handler ct 175,000 squarefeet,can and clearance services and 0/ air cargo, manages a new facility Iudate wo 747 freighters incorporates all U.S. Customs at JFK capable 0/handling 200,000 side byside. JFK ofpce operations. tons annually. Japan Air Lines JAl has a 26o.ooo-square-/oot, Si!5-million cargo building neartheairport's administrative offices. JFK vs. Manhattan JFK is by far the largest of the region's three airports. At just under 5,000 acres, it is roughly the sizo of Manhattan below Central Park and boasts 30 miles of roadway. Air Cargo Stowage Roughly half of the air cargo entering or leaving the New York region moves in the belly of passenger planes, much the way passengers' luggage does. The remainder is handled by dedicated cargo craft known as "freighters." With some exceptions, it generally moves on palletsor in air cargo containers, boxes designed with corners chopped off to suit the limited confines of an airplane's lower hold. Avariety of container loadingsystems are in use to minimizethe amount of Specialized air cargo containers have Some aircargo moves on pallets manual labor involved in the loading operation. been designed with rounded designed tofit either onthe corners totakeaccount <>/ theshape upper or lower deck offreighten or 0/ cargo holds ona variety passenger planes. ofaircraft. Components of the Air Cargo System 737-200 747 Express Carriers Over the past decade, the Federal Express's Newark facility, for example, express package business has operates around-the-clock and handles roughly 400,000 become a huge part of the air cargomarket in New York packages each day. Hosting outbound flights in the and elsewhere in the country. Federal Express alone now morning and inbound ones in the evening, it is highly accounts fora full 25 percent of all regional freight volume; efficient; its staff can turn a plane around in an UPS accounts for roughly 6 percent. In Newark, these hour. Adelayeddeparture is rare, thanks to a high-demand companies—known as "integratedcarriers"—absolutely parts bank located near the airport that helps minimize dominate the air cargo market, accounting for 66 percent time lost to mechanical failure. of the airport's cargo business. FedEx on the Move 3:00 p.m. The package istaken to a sorting facility, where il is 4:00 p.m.An express package consolidated into aircraft containers isdropped offata FedEx facility and loaded/rom a tractor- in losAngeles. trailer onto an aircraft headed for the company's Newark hub. From 10:00 p.m. At Newark, incoming cargo containers are unloaded from the plane and taken to Building 155, thesorting facility, where theyare emptied. 8:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m. Packages destined for New York City arecollected and trucked to local distribution centers, where they are more finely Through 6:00 a.m. Individual sorted and then trucked to their packages areautomatically scanned ultimate customers. and sorted based on destination, viaa system 0/ conveyor belts. in an area bounded by Washington, Fulton, and Vesey streets. Washington Market prospered through the first half of the twentieth century, but ultimately congestion undermined its competitiveness as a wholesale Since its founding as a destination, and the city closed it down trading post in 1624, New in 1956. Wholesale markets sprouted up in the York has been a city of outer boroughs as well. In Brooklyn, the commerce and markets. Wallabout Market— The earliest markets, in the seventeenth the largest farmers' market in the century, were comprised of pushcarts in borough—opened in 1884 adjacent to the lower Manhattan that sold vegetables, meats, Brooklyn Navy Yard. Following the and dairy products from local farms. In site's acquisition for a dry-dock facility in 1812, to reduce the congestion on downtown 1941, the market relocated to Canarsie— streets, the city's first real wholesale where it continues to operate today as the market—Washington Market—was created BrooklynTerminal Market. The Bronx developed its own terminal market in the 1920s. Stretching along the Major Deegan highway between East 149thSt. and the Macombs Dam Bridge near Yankee Stadium, the Bronx Terminal market wasbuilt as a receiving point for Markets fruits and vegetables. It continues to operate todayat a reduced level of activity than it once did, and may vacate its current site to make way for a large mixed- use real estate development. The major produce markets have historically been supplementedby meat markets. In addition to one at Hunts Point, two smaller meat markets—the Brooklyn Wholesale Meat Market on the Brooklyn waterfront and the Gansevoort Meat Market in Greenwich Village—operate today. Relocated from Fort Greene, the Brooklyn Wholesale Meat Market today comprises over 150,000 square feet in two buildings. The Gansevoort Market, as seen from Washington Street looking west, 1885. Making a Fruit Salad The now York region imports fruit from countries across the world. Bananas, many of thorn from Ecuador, are by far the largest fruit import. : •P SpamEriain .^^ TnrkmTurkoy China Gioiu 5 A i*e Vietnam •- -.7 "•"', TKn,l>i>4The land fr'tfST *#*i* :t oftrade in thousands of metric tons 4fe Coconuts, brazil nuts, £; cashew nuts, /resh ordried ^ Grapes./resh ordried L Dates, /igs, pineapples, avocados, etc.,/resh ordried ^ Citrus/ruit,/resh ordried Af Apples, pears,andquinces, /resh (L Bananas and plantains, /resh ordried The Banana Pipeline Abunch of bananas can be New York's port. One of the biggest points of entry is New found at almost any corner deli in the five boroughs. In York Container Terminal on the north shore of Staten Island, Manhattan delis, at the high end of the range, they sell for where the bananas—still very green—are unloaded for about 25 cents each; at sidewalk vendors and in the outer transport to wholesalers. boroughs they can be found for considerably less. But it is very At the wholesalers' premises, many of them inside the Hunts likely that those bananas—wherever they end up and Point Market, the bananas are moved to "ripening rooms" however much it cost to buy them—started in the same place, where they are kept at an average temperature of 58 degrees. came on the same ship, and moved over the same docks From there they will be sold in different stages of ripeness just days before. to the retailers: a big retailer may want half green and half Each year, some 100 million bananas arc consumed in yellow bananas; a smaller retailer may want all yellow New York. The lion's share are grown in plantations in Central bananas for quick sale. The ripening process generally takes or South America and are moved in refrigerated ships to about five to eight days in total. The Works Moving Freight Markets The Gansevoort Meat Market dates back to Metropolitan Markets the turn of the last century, when 250 slaughterhouses and packing plants formed Bronx Terminal the core of the district. Today, about a Market Built in the 1920s as the city's dozen meat businesses remain—sitting not first terminal market, always comfortably beside galleries, the Bronx Terminal clothing boutiques, and late-night clubs. Market has more ethnic j'oods andmore 0/a Each of these markets is small in retail-like environment comparison to the three best known and than Hunts Point. i largest New York markets: the Hunts GonBevoort Moat Market Although it Point Produce Market and Meat Market and houses onlyabout a the Fulton Fish Market. Hunts Point is dozen businesses today, really more than a market: it is the country's in ils heyday a century ago theGansevoort largest wholesale food distribution district had close to 250 center. Covering 329 acres, the complex slaughterhouses and packing plants. comprises the Hunts Point produce market, " a cooperative meat market, the broader • "food distribution center," and a variety of private food distributors and wholesalers. Receiving daily deliveries by road, air, and rail, it serves an estimated 15million tV customers in the tristate area—including Brooklyn Terminal 17,000 eateries and close to 3,400 street 7 Market Originally called Brooklyn Meat vendors in New York City alone. Wallabout Market, the Market The Brooklyn Brooklyn Terminal The Fulton Fish Market was added to Meat Market, located at Market opened in 1884 tst Ave. and 56th St., the roster of Hunts Point markets in right neit totheBrooklyn has been at this site since Navy Yard. Atthetime, 2005, when it moved to a new 430,000- its relocation from Fort it was Brooklyn's largest square-foot buildingon the south side Greenein the 1970s. wholesale farmer's of the Bronx complex. The move from its market, closing only when the Navy Yard historic location at the South Street Seaport, eipanded after thestart prompted by new federal regulations o/U'jrld War II. prohibiting the open-airsale of fish, is not expected to undermine its popularity A Night at the as the clearinghouse for fish in New York: Fulton Fish Market its 40 wholesalers currently sell about 220 million pounds (and 300species) of fish each year, makingit the world's second- largest central fish exchange (after Tokyo). Between 9p.m. and midnight, After arrivalat the market, anestimated 500,000pounds offish registered unloaders take the/ish off in 80 or so trucks arrive at the trucks and organize it onto the market. Between 20 percentand palettes. Larger loads can take upto 40 percent 0/ this total has an hour to unloadcompletely. arrived byair via JFX. The Geography of Hunts Point Market Hunts Point Terminal Market The Hunts Point Terminal Market, one 0/ thepremier produce markets in the world, is located on 126 acres within theHunts Point complex. Its55 fruit and vegetable wholesalers, organized as a coop, sellalmost three billion pounds offruit and vegetables a year, with revenues inexcess ofSi.5billion. It consists 0/ four large buildings—each about threeblocks long. Food distribution businesses In addition to theorganized mcrkets, thereisa range ofsingle warehouses Rail dolivory Hunts Point receives for various food processing and regular railservice from agricultural distribution businesses. producers via CSX Railroad. Its annualtotalof 3,000 railcars make it thesingle biggest user 0/rail service within New York City. Fulton Fish Market The new Fulton Fish Market, at 300,000 square feet, is 35,000 square feet Hunts Point Cooperative larger than its predecessor. The Market The Hunts Point selling area isfully refrigerated. Cooperative Market, involved in the allowing displays 0/ product without processing andsale 0/ meat, is ice. loading decks allow upto 20 located on 60acres andconsists of trucks at a time to unload much six large refrigerator-freezer more rapidly (two anda half hours) buildings. Some 47independent than was possible on the streets wholesale/ood businesses make up 0/Manhattan (five hours). thecoop. From to p.m.to roughly 1a.m., Fromaround 3 a.m. to 6 a.m.. tin- After thefish is bought, a the fish isdelivered to the retailers arrive. Upward of 600 licensed loader delivers the fish to wholesalers' stalls. Some wholesalers buyers will visit ona normal night, the buyer'scar or van. The will /illetthefish before putting looking for the freshest fish busiest hoursfor the loaders are it ondisplay. and thebest prices. The average between 4 a.m. and 7 a.m. customer spends about three hours at the site.