The Port of Savannah is a major U. S. seaport located at Savannah, Georgia and also known as the Garden City Terminal. Its extensive facilities for oceangoing vessels line both sides of the Savannah River approximately 18 miles from the Atlantic Ocean. Operated by the Georgia Ports Authority (GPA), the Port of Savannah competes primarily with the Port of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina to the northeast, and the Port of Jacksonville in Jacksonville, Florida to the south. The GPA operates one other Atlantic seaport in Georgia, the Port of Brunswick, located at Brunswick, Georgia, as well as two interior ports linked to the Gulf of Mexico, Port Bainbridge and Port Columbus.
Owned and operated by the Georgia Ports Authority, the Garden City Terminal is the fourth-busiest container port in the United States and provides access to 44 percent of U.S. consumers in 2-3 days. At 1,200 acres, it’s North America’s busiest single-terminal container facility. This allows for maximum efficiency and flexibility, concentrating all manpower, technology and equipment in one massive container operation.
The terminal includes two Class I railroads on-site that provides freight by train to boat without weight restrictions. Other ports without a rail system have weight restrictions when moving containers via truck. The rail system helps with moving 2,000 lbs. a thousand miles on a single gallon of fuel. The port also sees approximately 8,000 trucks in and out through the day.
The port has also invested in more than 2,800 refrigerated container spaces, with more on the way. The refrigerated space allows another known Georgia product, poultry, to be exported through Savannah. In fact, the Port of Savannah exports so much poultry that if Georgia was a country then the state would be the fourth largest poultry exporter in the world.
Here’s a quick video clip of cargo being unloaded from a container ship at the Port of Savannah.