Photography by Clark James Mishler.

Multi-Modal Leaders in Alaska 

Alaska’s multi-modal transportation industry/infrastructure is complex.

By Nicole A. Bonham  

From the docks of Ketchikan to the shores of Prudhoe Bay, Alaska’s transporters deliver our goods each day by land, by air, by sea.

                It’s a select few among that roster of professional cargo handlers that offer their clientele a multi-modal range of transport options. They are the companies that use Alaska’s challenging geography and breadth to their benefit, creating a logistical movement network based in marine, air, railway and truck transport.

It’s a case of simply selecting from among Alaska’s varied freight-transport services, then letting the professionals do their job.

Master Shippers

Key among those companies providing a full multi-modal complement of services, Lynden Inc. is a household name for freight customers in Alaska, the Lower 48 and in many international locales. Lynden and its family of subsidiaries provide a long list of capabilities, to include truck-based transportation, scheduled and charter barges, scheduled and chartered air freighters, rail and multi-modal logistics. For those searching out a “one-stop shop” for complicated transfers, such as international ocean transport, or hazardous waste and chemicals transfer, Lynden provides custom operations for each.

                Not surprisingly, cargo entering Alaska constitutes the largest segment of Lynden’s operation. Of its various subsidiaries, three share the largest volume of cargo: Alaska Marine Lines, Lynden Transport and Alaska Railbelt Marine. “In terms of revenue, air, truck and marine are about evenly split,” says Lynden CEO and President Jim Jansen. “There is not a great deal of fluctuation, with the exception of the resource industries, which fluctuate with the level of construction and development activity.”

                Another primary freight-transport giant is CSX Lines, subsidiary to global freight transporter CSX Corp. The company’s vessels sail twice weekly from Tacoma to Anchorage, to/from Dutch Harbor each week, and twice weekly to Kodiak. Truck and barge service connects CSX Lines to a regional network of communities in those areas. And through its cooperative relationship with Maersk-Sealand, CSX Lines provides its customers access to global seafood markets.

                These and other transport-related companies like Pacific Alaska Forwarders Inc., Carlile Transportation Systems and Totem Ocean Trailer Express round out what has become a well-developed, multi-modal, freight-transport industry in Alaska.

            Though many transportation-related sectors in the nation have buckled under the pressure of recent economic slowdown stemming from events like the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the shock wave of the telecom industry collapse, and even the autumn’s waterfront labor negotiations, Alaska has seemingly weathered such storms with relative strength.

            “The state of the industry is currently stable,” Jansen affirms. “The future depends upon Alaska’s ability to create new and support existing resource activity and to maintain good tax and policy decisions to encourage economic activity in Alaska.”

            CSX Lines of Alaska Vice President and General Manager Ken Privratsky offers a similar report of stability.

“Many of us forget that 10 years ago, we in Alaska did not have many of the large businesses we now take for granted,” he says. “Over the past decade, the intermodal transportation system and providers have effectively fed this growth and continue to do so. We in Alaska indeed are enjoying the ‘fruits’ of a very robust supply chain that extends from suppliers and distributors in the Lower 48.

 “From a transportation industry vantage point, such overall growth has been positive and clearly keeps us riding waves rather than settling in troughs,” says Privratsky. “Our challenge is to continue the growth, which benefits all of us in Alaska.”

Many Modes

                When discussing transportation options, it’s important to understand the industry vernacular. The folks at Merriam-Webster offer the following:

·         Intermodal – “Being or involving transportation by more than one form of carrier during a single journey.”

·         Multi-modal – “Having or involving several modes.”

Those definitions in mind, it can be said that the state of Alaska itself offers an infrastructure well suited to covering all the bases of multi-modal transportation–of both people and cargo.

Although at first blush it might appear the state would suffer from the vast distances and geographic isolation of its “frontier” image, that is remarkably not the case. With the advantages of a well-developed air, rail and waterborne transportation infrastructure, Alaska enjoys a level of accessibility that contrasts with its wilderness consciousness.

“I don’t think that anybody here or in the business community in the Lower 48 is fooled into thinking that Alaska is a frontier and inaccessible,” Privratsky says. A relative newcomer to the company, he nonetheless knows a little something about accessibility. Privratsky brings to the company the experience of a 33-year U.S. Army career, most recently as a major general in charge of surface transportation for the U.S. Department of Defense. Having moved troops and cargo worldwide under challenging circumstances, he understands that the concept of access has little to do with geographical placement, more with the level of developed infrastructure and the efficiency of the transportation operator.  

“It’s clearly the minority who would think Alaska is out here on the fringes,” he says. “Those who do have a business stake in Alaska know that transportation and multi-modal logistics … are the lifeblood of Alaska.”

 Easy Access

It’s with that same attitude that the Anchorage Economic Development Corp. promotes that city’s ease of access to potential site surveyors, pointing out that doing business in Anchorage is simplified by an array of methods available to ship goods and people into and out of the state’s largest port and air hub.

Consider that, from the Anchorage area, 95 percent of the industrialized world is less than a nine-hour flight away. Some 90 percent of cargo traveling between North America and Asia crosses the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport tarmac, the AEDC reports. In turn, the Port of Anchorage actively serves more than three-fourths of the state’s population centers through its links to other land- and air-based transport cousins. The Alaska Railroad, with its full-service railbelt connection at Whittier intercepting marine cargo sent north from Seattle and Tacoma, effectively services towns and ports from Fairbanks south to the Gulf of Alaska. Supplementing the air transport to and from the state, Alaska’s network of charter airlines and regional air carriers further distribute goods to remote and isolated destinations statewide. That winged leg of the state’s transport sector enjoys more than 1,100 airports, seaplane bases and organized landing sites, the AEDC reports. 

Finally, the highway and primary road system, though perhaps not as expansive as in the Lower 48 states, nonetheless gets the job done, providing transporters with a series of key arteries to feed goods and people to the backbone of Alaska’s population center. And for those areas where geography prevents highway access–the archipelago of Southeast Alaska, for example–the Alaska Marine Highway System also steps in, serving as a carrier of people and things to the tiny ports and backwaters along the island-dotted Panhandle.

Movers and Shakers

Still, as Lynden’s Jansen points out, understanding that Alaska enjoys a multi-modal transportation infrastructure is only part of the package.

“Even though there are areas of excellent infrastructure in place, there are still challenges in operating in Alaska, particularly in remote areas,” he says. “The experience and success of operating in ‘frontier’ areas is what potential customers need to know.”

Equally important is the experience and flexibility of the companies that travel that infrastructure–specifically those that, like Lynden, offer proven expertise in many methods of transport. That edge allows them to custom fit a transport combination to best fit the client’s deadline, physical limitations and routing challenges.

“In spite of the distances and remoteness of Alaska, transportation is highly competitive providing efficient and excellent service,” Jansen says. “What counts in the transportation business is the cost, frequency and enroute time, and not the mode of service.”

Click It to Ship It

As Alaska’s transporters work to increase that dynamic internal formula, they’re simultaneously making it easier for the customer to do business.

Click on the Web site of any major transportation player these days and what pops up is a full-service, consumer-savvy operations and marketing tool. Internet-based customer service is the wave of today–with reservations, tracking and payment services a click away.

When CSX Lines began serving the Great Land more than three decades ago as Sea-Land Service Inc., the concept of full-service information technology was perhaps a promising but minor instrument. Today, the company offers online customers an easy link to its NetCaptain tool, a logistics-management Web application that transports the customer into the real-time world of e-commerce.

Privratsky points to CSX Lines’ embrace of technology as one of its key attributes and interests. “I’m talking enabling customers to book their cargo online, not having to call up and talk simply on the phone; but to actually power up and book it online,” he says. And, “based on traffic patterns, to have even timeless booking, where bookings take place automatically, based on volume and channels. Then well beyond cargo tracking into the payment of services, I clearly believe that is the future for not just the sealift industry, of which I’m a part, but of all the transportation industry.”

Likewise, Lynden recently rolled out its latest e-commerce enhancement, Easy Reporting, to supplement its own Easy Commerce shipping system and related Easy Shipping and Easy Tracing tools. The new Easy Reporting tool rounds out the company’s Web-based suite, giving customers instant access to data including management, accounting and operations reports, according to the company.

“We’ve made it easy for our customers to manage their transportation,” says Alex McKallor, president of Lynden’s Alaska Marine Lines, a primary freight shipper for Alaska’s Panhandle and the Yukon Territory of Canada. Its towering barges are a familiar sight to those living along the Inside Passage, where everything from new cars and boats to manufactured homes and even grocery store milk and produce arrives by water.

On a smaller scale, Alaska trucking giant Carlile Transportation Systems–another Alaska success story, with terminals across the state and having grown from a small family operation in 1980 to more than 100 company-owned trucks and array of specialized trailing equipment–offers its own version of logistics management with its freight-tracking tool carlile@work. Customers can also log onto Carlile’s Web site to view their invoice and shipping details.

Alaska-based Totem Ocean Trailer Express Inc., offering roll-on/roll-off cargo service between Anchorage and Tacoma, uses the Web to distribute its sailing schedule and shipping rates. TOTE’s terminal at the Port of Anchorage is indicative of the state’s ease of convenient multi-modal links, located only minutes from rail and highway connections.

Seamless Flow

Behind the scenes, technology is more than customer service. It’s also the key to streamlining and debugging the flow of intermodal shipping, where cargo undergoes transfers between several modes of transportation and physical links before arriving at its ultimate destination.

“The challenge, and it’s not easy, is to get all the players and customers tied together in terms of technology on an intermodal network,” CSX Lines’ Privratsky poses. “It’s not happening as well as it should, particularly when you start shipping things internationally. You have a lot of black holes.

“Wherever you have handoffs of cargo, you have seams that develop,” Privratsky says. “Everybody does not use the same (operating systems) and programs, so developing seamless systems will be a challenge for some time to come.”

Jansen similarly points to the impact of information technology on the intermodal industry.

“Information technology is clearly a challenge to keep up with and will impact the success of anyone in the intermodal business,” Jansen says. “I believe the biggest challenge will be to control costs and remain competitive against the national and international large companies that can spread their technology and administrative costs over huge volumes of cargo.”

Balance and Security

As for other challenges facing the industry: balancing the heavy northbound traffic with a comparable degree of southbound shipments; also, a general tightening of industry security and increased urgency to understand the contents of every pallet, every box in this climate of heightened defense.

“Our challenge as a state is to grow businesses here to produce things–so that, for my business, we fill up more containers going southbound and don’t transport air,” Privratsky says. Additionally, “we fully anticipate there will be a greater demand for advanced notification of cargo, specifically when it has to do with hazardous materials,” he says. “We need to know exactly what is in a box. At one time it was okay to just ship a box. Now we want to know what the widgets are within the box.”

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