The $3 million chamber was shipped from Brisbane, Australiato St. Luke's Medical Center in Milwaukee

John S. Connor, Inc., a full service logistics company based in Glen Burnie, MD, has recently handled the shipment of the largest rectangular hyperbaric chamber ever made. The $3 million chamber was manufactured by Fink Engineering of Melbourne, Australia.

The chamber, one of only four that exist in the US, was made for St. Luke's Medical Center, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy is a medical treatment where a patient breathes 100 percent oxygen while in a pressurized chamber. The treatment is used to treat conditions such as problem wounds, carbon-monoxide poisoning and exceptional blood loss.

'The chamber was shipped via ocean from Fink Engineering's manufacturing plant in Brisbane, Australia, to Long Beach, California, and then by a special 132 ft.-long multi-axle transporter to Milwaukee,' stated Kathy O'Keefe, sales representative at John S. Connor. The chamber weighs over 66 tons and measures 52.4' long, 12.3' wide, and 9.5' tall.

When the chamber arrived, the road was closed to allow space for a crane, the roof of the medical center was opened, and the semi-trailer-sized chamber was hoisted and set into position in the building. The chamber required a 2,700-square-foot hole in the roof. The roof, electrical components and mechanical components are being finished around the chamber. The total cost of the project is $7 million.

'This unique shipment was a matter of tight coordination and cooperation among John S. Connor and all of our contracted partners and vendors,' stated Diane Olszewski, Connor's Export/NVOCC manager. 'Working on an extremely tight schedule, we coordinated the logistics from the manufacturing plant in Australia, including inland transport, port crane handling, ocean transport to Long Beach, customs clearance, and then truck transport to Milwaukee.'