Port of Tucson – everything but H2O

Maryellen Farmer

Water was the missing element on a recent TRIPS tour of the Port of Tucson. Everything else was there in this full-service inland port. The Port of Tucson, an active 800+ acre foreign trade zone, provides an access point for rail service for ocean containers from Asia, via the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, and freight from all over the U.S. and Mexico. Here it all comes together, where up to 800 freight containers can be transferred each day between truck and rail. Shipments are then rerouted by rail to destinations all over the country, or goods are stored in over two million square feet of onsite warehouses.

The group of 23 Quail Creek residents watched cranes offload containers from trucks and load them onto railcars and watched a brief presentation inside an immense warehouse used to store hundreds of tons of copper sheets from Arizona mines. Here the group learned about the operation of the Port, its benefits to the local area and future plans to add another 15 million square feet of warehouse space. There were also some interesting facts worth sharing such as:

One train can carry the equivalent of 240 trucks.

All of the Mexican beer headed to Arizona and Nevada comes through the Port of Tucson.

The last stop on the tour included a tour of the Port offices housed in a vintage Pullman railcar and a photo opportunity with the two locomotives used to move trains around the property. Before heading back to Quail Creek the group savored lunch at the renowned Chef Omar’s Hi-Way Chef Diner, located at the TTT truck stop on Benson Highway.