Royster applies unconventional wisdom in leading Baltimore’s MTC Logistics

As Baltimore-based MTC Logistics expands its temperature-controlled facility presence, the company’s president, F. Brooks Royster III, sees its flagship distribution center’s immediate proximity to uncongested Port of Baltimore berths delivering increasing benefits to shippers. Applying unconventional wisdom honed over a 40-plus-year career, Royster is leading the project that is adding more than 4.5 million cubic feet to the total of nearly 16 million cubic feet of chilled space that MTC Logistics already operates at a trio of locations, in Baltimore and Jessup, Md., and New Castle, Del.

In an exclusive interview with the American Journal of Transportation, Royster, who, immediately prior to coming aboard at MTC Logistics, served as the Maryland Port Administration’s executive director, shares his thoughts on the Port of Baltimore and success in the refrigerated and frozen cargo realm, as well has his wife’s tolerance for almost 44 years of work hours that can be as unconventional as his astuteness. Let’s jump right in and talk about the expansion project that’s under way at MTC Logistics’ distribution center next to the Port of Baltimore’s Seagirt Marine Terminal. How is that project advancing, and what do you see as the benefits to customers? It will be another almost 16,000 pallet positions, another 130,000 square feet of refrigerated freezer space. It is a phase-two effort that was planned from the inception, for after we built phase one, which was 16,500 pallet positions. We had purchased [with the 2008 acquisition of a former General Motors plant site] enough land immediately adjacent to the Seagirt Marine Terminal and the last available land so that, if the project was as successful as we hoped it would be, the plan all along was to do a phase-two mirror image of phase one. We broke ground in early June. We have a late December estimated time of completion. The reason for the expansion, quite frankly, is the success of the Port of Baltimore and its growth in and attraction of refrigerated cargos, both import and export. It’s proven to be a good investment by the Hoffberger family [owners of Hoffberger Holdings Inc., Baltimore-based parent of MTC Logistics] due to its close proximity to the marine terminal, the logistics coordination we employ between our drayage operation and Ports America Chesapeake, and the outbound freight we handle for our customers through our trucking subsidiary, MLogistics. We’ll be offering ULT storage, which is ultra-low-temperature storage, translating to minus 76 degrees Fahrenheit, which is really of interest to importers of sushi-grade tuna, people who require yogurt cultures to be stored at that temperature, and there are other commodities that are coming to fore that they’ve learned that minus 76 degrees Fahrenheit, which translates to minus 60 degrees centigrade, is a beneficial temperature that really halts any degradation of the product. By virtue of our placement next to the port and a program that we put in place for max-loading containers, we do not have a weight restriction for over-the-road transport from the port to our facility that would restrict our ability to load containers to their maximum capacity. In many cases, 20- and 40-foot containers cannot be loaded to their maximum capacity because it exceeds the road limits. In our case, because of our efforts with the city and the state, and in cooperation with the port, we have a permit that allows us to take the container all the way to its weight capacity, provided it doesn’t exceed its cubic capacity, obviously. Taking the container to its weight capacity creates a saving for the customer, because they can put more weight in fewer containers. Based upon your familiarity with the Port of Baltimore, not only from the past six and a half years at MTC Logistics but also in serving for two years prior to that as executive director of the Maryland Port Administration, what advantages do you see the Port of Baltimore offering that make it unique among East Coast ports? Lack of congestion. Many of our competing ports are suffering through a great deal of terminal congestion. We have a very efficient terminal operator in Ports America Chesapeake and a proactive port administration in the MPA, and, with the expansion of the port, four berths now for post-Panamax and now super-post-Panamax vessels. We don’t have berth congestion. We don’t have terminal congestion. And then the geographical placement of the port, almost at the head of the Chesapeake Bay, puts us much closer to the marketplace than other ports. That has actually benefited us a great deal. I would say there’s room for growth at the port, and our geographical location gives us an inherent advantage, especially to the Midwest. How has your diverse industry background – including as chief executive officer of the Port of Miami Terminal Operating Co., as president of Riomar Agencies Inc., as chief operating officer of the Mississippi State Port Authority at Gulfport and 24 years with Ryan-Walsh Stevedoring Co. Inc. – prepared you for leadership in the refrigerated logistics sector? Well, in a number of ways. When I was chief operating officer of the Mississippi State Port Authority at Gulfport, we had several customers – in Dole and Chiquita and Turbana – that required refrigerated space, and, as a result, we were requested by those groups, the banana groups in particular, who also had melons and pineapples that they needed stored, to build them refrigerated space, and I was the project manager on that. I saw it from design through groundbreaking through ribbon-cutting of several facilities. Not only that, but Gulfport had a freezer where poultry was exported through, at what was one of the largest poultry exporting ports in the nation at the time, pre-Katrina [the 2005 hurricane that devastated the Port of Gulfport]. So, I’ve had a great deal of experience both in construction and operation of refrigerated and freezer facilities. That translated on to being a stevedore, loading and discharging refrigerated cargos – refrigerated being bananas, pineapples and melons – and then loading frozen products, which was poultry. So I’ve been around refrigerated cargos my whole life, from one perspective to another, and this just was a logical progression. Your Southern roots run deep, born in Gulfport, raised since early childhood in Mobile, Ala., and educated at the University of South Alabama and the University of Montevallo – an Alabama school with the motto of “Unconventional Wisdom.” That being the case, how do you see unconventional wisdom being favorably applied in the port and logistics industry? We were taught early, both in college and then working for the company I worked for for 24 years, Ryan-Walsh, to think out of the box, and that’s what unconventional wisdom gives you is the ability to think out of the box, to see a larger picture than perhaps what you’re just focused on at that particular moment. The ability to see the larger picture and to think out of the box has assisted me in my career throughout the years. Can you share an example? I believe I just did a few minutes ago. The fact that there was unused cargo space in marine refrigerated containers that were leaving here with export cargo or coming here with import cargo, by virtue of our reducing the cost of ocean freight to our customers [by facilitating use of that space], we became more valuable in placement to them. The ability to see that type of opportunity is really unconventional wisdom and thinking out of the box. I believe you’re approaching 50 years of marriage, to the same woman no less. What’s your secret, and what kinds of things do you enjoy doing with your close and extended family? Well, it’ll be 44 years in November to be exact that I’m married to Priscilla, who is a licensed customs broker and actually started in the industry one year before I did, and I think that is one of the components to longevity in our marriage is that she has understood she is married to someone with unconventional hours and a job that has taken him away from her on a regular basis. She was more tolerant because she was in the industry and understood the impacts of that. The second thing is I would say her extreme patience. And what do I like to do with my family? We do enjoy our time together. We have two outstanding sons and three lovely granddaughters, and we try to take them abroad as much as we possibly can, and we did with our sons as well, to expose them to the rest of the world. That has allowed them to be both more tolerant of others and more knowledgeable about world events, and I think even our granddaughters have expressed how much they’ve enjoyed our time abroad and what it has brought to them both culturally and, quite frankly, their willingness to eat the foods they might not have been willing to experience before. So we like to travel internationally. Any favorite spots? South of France. That goes without saying.