Industrial

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Inland ports are a growing transportation option in the national supply chain. These facilities provide users — including automotive suppliers, retailers, manufacturers and agricultural producers — an option to import and export their wares to seaports via shipping containers by rail as opposed to trucking their products directly to a port terminal. One of the more prominent inland ports in the country is Inland Port Greer in Upstate South Carolina. The facility’s anchor client is BMW, which operates its mega manufacturing campus in nearby Spartanburg, S.C. Class I freight railroad operator Norfolk Southern Corp. provides rail services from the inland port to the Port of Charleston. Brian Gwin, senior industrial development manager for Norfolk Southern, said that when the railroad operator and the South Carolina Ports Authority (SCPA) established Inland Port Greer in 2013, it was apparent almost immediately that they had a behemoth on their hands. “We knew it was going to be mostly BMW, but we designed Inland Port Greer for 50,000 lifts a year,” said Gwin, referring to the number of shipping containers moved on or off Norfolk Southern trains at the inland port. According to multiple media outlets, the inland port exceeded 100,000 …