With its recent Jacksonville facility expansion, adding 20 acres and a high-capacity reachstacker, North Florida Warehouse FTZ is augmenting capabilities for near-port stevedoring, including handling of overweight, oversized cargos.

“We’re positioning ourselves as Jacksonville’s only off-port stevedoring site,” Robert Fox, chief executive officer and president of parent firm The JZ Expedited Companies, told AJOT, noting that being situated even a few miles off port property makes it possible to offer more competitive pricing.

A newly acquired 99,000-pound-capacity SANY reachstacker is a key feature of North Florida Warehouse FTZ’s expanded facilities serving Jacksonville cargo interests, including heavylift and breakbulk markets.
A newly acquired 99,000-pound-capacity SANY reachstacker is a key feature of North Florida Warehouse FTZ’s expanded facilities serving Jacksonville cargo interests, including heavylift and breakbulk markets.

Opened in February, the new North Florida Warehouse FTZ site features 250,000 square feet of warehouse space and more than 15 acres of paved storage area, plus a 99,000-pound-capacity SANY reachstacker, representing a total investment of more than $1.2 million.

Like the 3.7-acre facility opened by the Jacksonville-based company a year earlier as the Southeast’s first outdoor Foreign-Trade Zone installation managed by a third-party logistics concern, the new site is in the Imeson International Industrial Park, less than 5 miles east of the TraPac Jacksonville facility at the Jacksonville Port Authority’s Dames Point Marine Terminal and within 8 miles of JAXPORT’s Blount Island Marine Terminal. Jacksonville International Airport is within 10 miles as well.

Chris Sloope, chief operating officer of The JZ Expedited Companies, told AJOT that the need for more space became clear within a few months after opening of the initial 3.7-acre facility, as that facility rapidly became full and customers started asking for more outdoor storage offerings.

“We quickly realized this could be our global logistics center for the foreseeable future,” Sloope said, referring to the recently added site. Move to the new site of corporate offices, as well as non-vessel-operating common carrier and air freight operations, is being completed this month, augmenting trucking, warehousing and storage operations already in place.

“We really can handle just about anything on-site,” Sloope said, citing the reachstacker’s ability to lift loads of as many as nearly 50 tons.

North Florida Warehouse FTZ facilities currently handle cargo ranging from power generation equipment to paper rolls; consolidations and deconsolidations of outbound and inbound goods moving between Jacksonville and Puerto Rico; and commodities used on cruise ships calling Jacksonville.

Negotiations are being completed with CSX for opening a spur track from the Jacksonville-based rail firm’s line directly into the largest warehouse building on the new site, Fox said.

North Florida Warehouse FTZ facilities are proximate to rail lines of CSX, Norfolk Southern and Florida East Coast Railway and multiple north-south and east-west Interstate highways. Furthermore, users can avail themselves of Customs-related benefits gained by being part of JAXPORT’s FTZ No. 64, the largest such zone in the Sunshine State.

The JZ Expedited Companies date back to 2009 has since grown to encompass a broad spectrum of logistics interests.