Baltimore Port Reopens After Bridge Collapse: Cargo Recovery Prospects Assessed
After an 11-week closure due to the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse, the Port of Baltimore reopened with a ceremony on June 12, 2024. While vessel counts may not return to pre-collapse levels until 2025, shippers and carriers are resuming bookings. Labor unions report strong interest in returning to work, and the port has added data-sharing and capacity enhancements. However, trucking executives expect a gradual trickle of cargo rather than an immediate surge.
In the aftermath of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in March, shippers and carriers repeatedly asked Maryland Port Administration Executive Director Jonathan Daniels a common question: How can we help?
“Our answer was pretty simple,” Daniels told Supply Chain Dive in an interview Tuesday. “You can come back when the channel opens.”
The Port of Baltimore leader’s response highlighted a central concern for Marylanders following the tragedy: that permanent diversions to other ports could turn the deadly disaster into a long-term threat to the state’s main economic engine.
Six construction workers lost their lives when the cargo ship Dali lost power and struck the bridge on March 26. The collapse cut off vessel access to the port, forcing cargo to be rerouted to Virginia, Georgia, and other locations.
Eleven weeks and millions of dollars in lost wages and revenue later, the port fully reopened with a ceremony on Wednesday. “The Fort McHenry Channel is fully cleared, and the Port of Baltimore is reopened for business,” Maryland Gov. Wes Moore announced at the event.
Daniels said he does not expect vessel counts to return to prior levels until 2025. However, the port is poised for a rebound as bookings resume, according to Baltimore port, labor, trucking, and other supply chain executives.
“By what we've seen with the schedule thus far — that continues to strengthen — they are holding true to their word,” Daniels said.
Shippers ‘either already back or planning to get back’
No shipping line or other customer of the Port of Baltimore has shared plans to radically alter their long-term supply chains because of the bridge collapse, the port’s executive director told Supply Chain Dive.
“It was more just a modification as to when they would return, not if they would return,” Daniels said.
Importers, in particular, have been waiting for ocean carriers to offer Baltimore bills of lading, said Lee Connor, chairman of John S. Connor Inc., a Baltimore-area customs brokerage and logistics firm.
Shipping lines “were not going to come here until they were certain they could get their ships in and out,” Connor said.
But most customers who shipped via the Port of Baltimore “were doing it for good reason,” said the chairman of the century-old company.
“This works for their business,” Connor said. “They're either already back or planning to get back.”
Labor ready to return to work
Thousands of Baltimore dockworkers are eager to get back to the piers. Members of International Longshoremen’s Association Local 333 have been pressing their union leader about when they’ll see more hours.
“They're obviously looking for more work because it's a little bit slower coming back,” ILA Local 333 President Scott Cowan said in an interview. “They just want to get back to work.”
Cowan expressed excitement about how rapidly response teams managed to remove the mangled bridge wreckage from the channel — and surprise at the haste of returning cargo volumes.
“It's coming back stronger than I anticipated,” Cowan said. “We're going in the right direction.”
Despite the reopening, Baltimore port truck drivers are still taking advantage of federal regulatory waiver extensions until later this month to run other East Coast ports, said Louis Campion, president and CEO of the Maryland Motor Truck Association.
Shipping lines typically book delivery locations four to six weeks in advance, the state trucking association president pointed out.
“It's a little premature for us to anticipate that anything is going to be happening in a dramatic way here, all of a sudden, in the coming days,” he said. “I'd probably liken it a little bit more to a trickling effect, until we start to get some of those major ocean lines fully rebooking in Baltimore.”
Baltimore adds cargo visibility and capacity
The nation’s busiest port for autos, light trucks, and other roll-on/roll-off cargo is emerging from its shutdown offering enhanced visibility and capacity for shippers.
Ports America Chesapeake, which operates Baltimore’s container terminal under a long-term deal, joined the federal Freight Logistics Optimization Works (FLOW) data-sharing program after the collapse, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg announced at the ceremony.
“This comes at a welcome and important time,” Buttigieg said. “As the Port of Baltimore reopens, that transparency is going to be vital for preparing for the next phase.”
Baltimore has more space for auto shipments, too. Tradepoint Atlantic, the port’s only unaffected terminal, at the former Bethlehem Steel site on Sparrows Point, received an $8 million infusion of federal grant money to pave parking lots, doubling its auto capacity.
“We've seen a significant recovery in the roll-on/roll-off cargo that is really a staple of the port,” Daniels said. “We're finally seeing the container vessels return in earnest.”