Gov. Mike Parson’s Supply Chain Management Task Force is recommending that state legislators, trade associations, and community leaders explore shipping containers as an opportunity sector.
The task force is co-managed by the Missouri Department of Transportation and the Missouri Department of Higher Education Workforce Development.
“We have a lot of trucking companies and trailer manufacturing firms here already so it would be about working with them to determine what it would take to ramp and scale that up,” said Mardy Leathers, director of the Missouri Department of Higher Education Workforce Development. "Missouri also has a number of welding programs."
Because of its location, the Show-Me state is uniquely positioned to increase access to trailers and shipping containers nationwide.
“We are looking at what we need to do to modernize or expand port access on the Mississippi and Missouri rivers,” Leathers told the St. Louis Record. “If more shipping containers are going to originate from Missouri or end in Missouri, we want to make sure we have a strong supply of shipping containers, as well as the chassis and trailers needed to move them once they're pulled off of the waterway.”
The task force issued a report with 32 recommendations, including making the necessary investments to ensure that roadways are as efficient and modern as can be.
"If we think about inland ports and how to increase navigability across our waterways, that puts Missouri in a pretty unique spot," Leathers said. "We think we can compete with the coastal ports where we've had to rely on the ocean. Now, we can rely on moving things, not just across the ocean, but across our water and roadways."
Seven of the recommendations in the report are focused on expanding freight capacity, 15 are focused on workforce development, and 10 are concerned with regulatory issues around the transportation sector.
"The bipartisan and infrastructure plan provided a lot of dollars that the highway commission has been able to already put into these plans to upgrade and modernize our current infrastructure," Leathers said. "Increasing access to rail and connecting communities or industrial sites to rail lines is very important and then continuing to modernize and invest in those is another area we understand we have to do."
As previously reported in the Post Dispatch, some $30 million is allocated in the state budget for Missouri ports and funding will be needed to bolster the state's transportation capabilities.
"Truck parking is a big deal," Leathers added. "We have a lot of trucks that move up and down the highways and they have hours of service requirements they have to meet, which means they have to take breaks at certain times. We're about 2,300 truck parking spots short and that means we have more trucks every night than we do spaces available for them in our rest areas or in the private truck stops."