Independent LivingBrightmore’s Men’s Group Tours State Port Authority
January 13, 2018
The men’s group of Brightmore took a trip to the NC State Port Authority for an extensive tour of our Wilmington Port led by Bethany Welch, Communications Specialist for the NC State Ports. If you haven’t ever gone, it’s a definite “must see” for the Wilmington area! After showing identification, we loaded our bus to tour on the busiest day at our state port. We were lucky to tour on the day a large Yang Ming vessel docked (or as they say “birthed”) and was ready to unload 8,500 containers. It takes roughly 8-10 hours to unload a vessel, depending on the number of containers. Wilmington imports and exports refrigerated containers of protein and vegetables, wood chips, fluff pulp, pellets, tanks, Hum Vs, Tractors, rail lines and grains. The #1 import is grain, and #1 export is wood chips and pellets. The Wilmington Port is very proud to say they have the fastest “turn time” than any other port: 18 minutes for a truck to drop off a container and leave, and 32 minutes to drop a container off and load another one up. These were interesting facts that really impressed the men. A few others include: once a vessel gets to the mouth of the Cape Fear River, it takes a tug boat 2-3 hours to lead the vessel down 25 miles of river to our port. The port was established in 1945, and some of the warehouses on the property are before WWII. Liberty Ships for the war were built inside those warehouses, and Iron Man 3 was filmed at our Sate Port! It was a great morning of education, and as we left we saw just how secure our port was as each truck leaving goes through an x-ray machine and is examined by our US Customs and Border Patrol. We were amazed at everything we saw!