New port leader takes the wheel
Bridges becomes Port of Virginia’s second executive director

by Jessica Sabbath
Virginia Business
May 2007

Throughout his career, Jerry Bridges has often found himself at the helm of change.

Soon after he took over as the Portsmouth port manager of Sea-land Service, the Persian Gulf War broke out, boosting demand for maritime shipping of wartime supplies. Volume through the shipping company’s ports surged and the need for expansion was evident. “Here I am, a new guy to the industry, business tripled on [me], and now I’m in the middle of a construction program,” Bridges recalls.

In 1993, he again found himself in the middle of a major terminal expansion at his next job, running the Oakland terminal for Marine Terminals Corp. And when he was recruited to run the maritime division in 2001 at the Port of Oakland (where he was later promoted to executive director), he was the major push behind a vision to make ports more customer-focused businesses.

Now he hopes that his experiences will help him lead the Port of Virginia to become the premier — and largest — East Coast port. “I think the Port of Virginia is poised to be the best port on the East Coast of the United States,” says Bridges, the port’s new executive director. “That is my goal, and I’m stating it publicly.”

Bridges takes over the wheel from J. Robert Bray, whose guidance led the port to become one of the most technologically advanced and largest ports on the East Coast. Bray is retiring after working almost 40 years at the port and will remain executive director emeritus until December 2007.

In addition to working at the Port of Oakland, Marine Terminals and Sea-land, Bridges spent 20 years on active and reserve duty for the Marine Corps and worked as director of industrial relations at Roadway Express, a trucking company.

Virginia Business magazine sat down to meet Bridges soon after he took over his new role in February. Following are excerpts from the interview:

The hook that brought him to the Port of Virginia …
It’s Virginia. It’s the East Coast. I’m an East Coast person … Everything about California was good for me, but there’s nothing like coming back to your roots and what you really know. [Bridges was born in North Carolina.]

I went to California with the thought of living there for a few years and coming back, and this gave me the opportunity to do that. The fact that the Port of Virginia was looking for an executive director was just a bonus because the Port of Virginia had such great potential … It appeared to me that Virginia has greater potential than virtually any other port in the United States right now because of its ability to grow, its naturally deep harbors. The reputation of the port is without a blemish whatsoever. So what’s not to love about it?

His accomplishments at the Port of Oakland …
I went into the port business with a completely different mindset than most people coming into the port. For me, I wanted to change the way ports do business. I wanted to make ports customer-focused, business enterprises. And that’s exactly what I did. In Oakland, I was very successful in changing the culture from a very internally process-focused organization to one that was more driven by business objectives and customer service. As executive director, I continued to spread the gospel about customer service, community involvement and environmental stewardship.

The Port of Virginia’s shot at being No. 1 on the East Coast …
I want to grow the volume for the port to definitely meet or exceed the volumes of the Port of New York/New Jersey but not to diminish anything from any other port on the East Coast. We believe that the trade is growing at such a great extent and such a rapid pace that we are ideally situated to accommodate the growth, whereas most other ports on the East Coast are constrained in one form or another — either by the lack of land that can be developed for terminal operations, or they have water depth problems, and they can’t accommodate the new classes of vessels that are coming into service. I think that we have the right mindset with our labor here …I think our marketing team has done a good job in establishing a long-term, sustainable relationship with all the major carriers. I think on the structure and land side, our projects at Craney Island will put us really over the top in terms of our ability to accommodate more cargo.

We are close to the open ocean, we have terminal capacity currently, and we are building more capacity. We have the biggest and the best cranes in the world right now … There are also no bridges that could hamper a ship coming into our area.

We have offices strategically placed around the world that give us the benefit of being able to reach out immediately and touch customers in every corner of the world almost.

Where the port can improve …
I think we’re weak currently in the Indian subcontinent region, so we need to beef up our presence there somehow. I think we also need to shift in China. I think that we will be evaluating whether or not the Hong Kong office needs to remain and whether we should add another office in Shanghai, or move the operations out of Hong Kong into a Shanghai office.

We had somewhat of a disappointment in that the Georgia Port Authority overtook us as No. 2 on the East Coast as far as throughput is concerned, but I think that we were affected by some of the consolidation in the industry.

We think that more consolidations are likely…and in the short term it may have a negative impact on volumes up and down the coast. As ocean carriers and alliances decide where their load centers are going to be, our goal and our challenge is to make sure that Hampton Roads is a significant load center for one or two of these major alliances.

On the new APM Terminals …
Our mission as the Virginia Port Authority is to grow cargo through the region, and if Maersk is doing that, they’re helping us….APM Terminals has helped us be able to increase throughput by opening their terminal here. The technology that’s in play there will help the region in terms of productivity, efficiency, and I think quite frankly it’s going to have some positive impact on the environment because most of their [cranes] are electrified over there. It will really have less negative impacts on the environment. It sets the standards by which I think most terminals in the future will be measured and we think that’s a good reflection on the Hampton Roads areas, so we’re really proud that APM Maersk chose this venue.