Interstate 10 in coastal Alabama is expected to grow even busier next spring as a new wave of big trucks rolls onto the roadway.
Those 600 or more trucks will be moving back and forth daily between the Port of Mobile and Wal-Mart’s super-sized new regional distribution center west of Mobile in the Grand Bay area.
It’s a lot of heavy-hauling semis for 25 miles of expressway that connect the city’s core to heavily populated areas west and south, as local leaders acknowledge.
“We are aware of the traffic,” said Mobile County Commissioner Jerry Carl.
Said Jimmy Lyons, director and CEO of the Alabama State Port Authority: “They are convinced the roads are sufficient. They looked hard at this site and other sites.”
‘Roads are sufficient’: Walmart distribution center is coming to costal Alabama, and so are lots of trucks https://t.co/sOMkEP9Sy1 pic.twitter.com/g4OXPyljem
— AL.com (@aldotcom) March 29, 2017
The big-truck issue was one of the topics that arose following March 29’s official announcement at APM Terminals that Wal-Mart’s $135 million distribution center is expected deliver a jolt to container traffic at the Mobile port.
Lyons said the port anticipates a 10% increase in container activity, a figure that amounts to 25,000 containers annually. The Port of Mobile already ranks among the most active ports along the Gulf of Mexico.
Lyons said that transport of the Wal-Mart-bound containers to the regional distribution center will involve about three trucks each.
Already, more than 44,000 vehicles travel along I-10 each day in west Mobile County, although there is no breakdown on how many of those are semi-tractor trailers.
The distribution center, when fully operational, will be a logistics hub for the nation’s No. 1 retailer, which also ranks No. 3 on the Transport Topics Top 100 list of the largest private carriers in North America. The center will service approximately 800 of Wal-Mart’s 4,600 U.S. stores. Those 800 stores are scattered over a sweeping area of the nation’s heartland, from Alabama and Mississippi northward to the Great Lakes region.
| By John Sharp Alabama Media Group, Birmingham
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© 2017, Transport Topics, American Trucking Associations Inc.
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