Throughout history, cities have evolved in order to support commerce. Examine the geography of the great cities throughout history and youll find that each rose (or fell) in terms of wealth and stature depending upon the presence of a major transportation artery.

In ancient times, it was usually the existence of a deep-water port or a major river port that brought people together to form a city. Where nature didnt completely cooperate, canals were sometimes dug to extend waterborne commerce.

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As people expanded inland, roads were built to distribute goods throughout the interior of the country. The 19th century brought railroads to the mix, while the 20th century gave us motorized transport, as well as aviation.

These different modes of transportation were layered upon existing modes of transportation such that, nowadays, most major cities are linked together through a maze of highways, rail service and air. Those on the coast may also be able to support seaborne commerce, while others still have a lot of river-borne traffic.

Americas prosperity rides upon this network of air, land and sea routes that connects us not only to our U.S. neighbors, but also to the rest of the world. Businesses rely heavily upon a robust transportation infrastructure to bring raw materials to their factories, and to deliver finished products to wholesalers, retailers and, eventually, to the actual consumers.

Clearly, where a business locates its manufacturing and distribution facilities depends upon a whole host of factors, most of which are specific to that particular business.

If your market is in the Pacific Northwest, then Savannah or Jacksonville dont make a whole lot of sense, no matter how high they ranked in this survey. Likewise, if your company is shipping 10-ton combine tractors, being adjacent to a major FedEx or UPS hub is probably not all that important.

Still, some locations have a lot more going for them in terms of transportation infrastructure. These are the cities we consider most logistics friendly.

Topping this years list is Savannah, Ga., a bustling port city astride Interstates 95 and 16, followed by Louisville, Ky., Nashville, Tenn., Chattanooga, Tenn., and Oakland, Calif.

The remainder of the Top 10 consists of Jacksonville, Fla., San Diego, Calif., Los Angeles-Long Beach, Calif., Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn., and San Francisco, Calif.

Each of these metro areas is strong in at least three of the four major transportation modes road, rail, air and water and some are strong in all of them.

How we ranked them

In the final analysis, site selection is really a competition between cities. Thats why we chose to compare the transportation infrastructure of 328 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA) and Primary Metropolitan Statistical Areas (PMSA) as defined by the United States Office of Management and Budget in those areas important to supporting a manufacturing and distribution facility. We did not include the three newest MSAs Auburn-Opelika, Ala., Corvallis, Ore., and Missoula, Mont. for lack of sufficient data.

We gathered data in 10 major categories: the overall transportation & distribution industry climate, work force/labor costs/availability/skill levels; road/highway basic infrastructure and spending; road density/congestion/truck safety; road conditions; taxes & fees; railroad access; water ports (both river/lake and ocean); air service; and interstate highway access (both main and auxiliary routes).

Metro areas that scored best generally had a broad range of logistics-supporting infrastructure (ground, air, water/sea and rail) in place, as well as a plentiful and well-trained work force in a wide variety of transportation and logistics-related skills.

The data we collected came from a variety of public sources.

Information on the transportation and distribution industry climate came from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) and the Census Bureau.

In this category, we tried to get a feel for the overall strength and vitality of the transportation and distribution sectors within the various MSAs. We looked at things such as the number of establishments, the amount of revenue and the amount of revenue per employee (as a rough measurement of productivity).

If you're going to establish a distribution facility in one of this cities, this and the work force/labor category below will give you a feel for the type of business climate, as well as the work force youre likely to encounter.

The top five cities in terms of industry climate are Jacksonville, Miami, Houston, Atlanta and Orlando.

Work force and labor information also came from the BEA and the Census Bureau. In this category, we looked at the cost and availability of labor in the various T&D sectors. Since this survey is done from the employers perspective, lower wages are considered better, as are larger numbers of workers in the industry. The top five cities in terms of the work force are Salt Lake City, Johnson City-Kingsport-Bristol, Tenn., San Diego, Los Angeles-Long Beach, and Charleston, S.C.,

The next four categories involve road transportation. Most of the data came from the Federal Highway Administration.

Road infrastructure and spending attempts to gauge the road infrastructure in proportion to the metro areas population. We looked at miles of roadway per capita, as well as the percentage of those roadways that are considered freeways. We also looked at capital spending on highways in order to expand or maintain the existing infrastructure. To provide better perspective, we also looked at spending both per mile and per lane mile.

Our next category, road density/congestion/safety, measures the adequacy of a metros highway network.

We looked at vehicle density per capita, freeway density, traffic density per lane, and truck accidents in order to get a good feel for how the actual traffic and the physical infrastructure match up. Four lanes may be more than adequate for metros like Bryan-College Station, Texas, but not for ones like New York or Atlanta.

Road conditions are also important because they, too, have a significant impact on traffic flow, not to mention wear and tear. In this category, we looked at the conditions of major roads and interstate highways, both urban and rural, as well as the condition of bridges along those thoroughfares.

Infrastructure maintenance is a popular budget line for politicians to save money by deferring spending. The problem with this is that minor maintenance deferred has a habit of becoming a major repair after a few years of neglect.

The final road transportation category we looked at was the interstate highway network servicing each metro area. In this category we looked at the actual number of interstate highways servicing that particular metro area, as well as the number of auxiliary routes (otherwise known as loops or beltways, etc.).

We also examined vehicle taxes and fees, in order to measure some of the costs of traversing each of the metro areas, as well as the states in which they reside. In this category, we looked primarily at gas and diesel taxes.

In the next category, railroad service, we looked at the number of freight and Class I railroads that service the area. We also scrutinized things like miles of track, tons of cargo carried over those freight and Class I lines, as well as the safety record of railroads within that state. Most of the data came from the American Association of Railroads and the Federal Railroad Administration.

Water ports included both ocean-going vessel ports and river ports. While this is not an option for most cities, it is, in fact, a major transportation resource and, for those cities blessed by nature, these ports account for a tremendous volume of cargo tonnage.

And its not limited to just the coastal cities, either. Cities like St. Louis and Cincinnati both pass a lot of cargo through their inland ports.

The final category in the study is air service. Unlike water ports, and to a certain extent railroads, adequate air service is fundamental to a metro areas transportation infrastructure. Even passenger service is an important indicator because, according to Perry Trunick, editor of Transportation & Distribution magazine, something like 70 to 80 percent of all air freight shipped in the United States goes in the belly of wide-body passenger jets. The key to that statement is wide-body, which usually eliminates regional jets.

In this category we looked at things such as major carrier service, enplaned passenger and freight volume, and cargo airports. Data came from the Federal Aviation Administration and the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

You cant be good at everything

Not surprisingly, very few metro areas ranked high in every category. For example, No. 1 Savannah scored well in every category except density/congestion/safety, where it ranked No. 164. Simulary, No. 2 Louisville also scored well in every category except road density/congestion/safety, where it ranked No. 317.

The key to success is to be above average in the road transportation categories and to be strong in one or more of the others (air, sea or rail). That pretty well mirrors what most companies are looking for when they scout out sites for a new distribution facility.

While many companies tend to look at transportation infrastructure as an overall package, one mode frequently predominates, and that is usually road transportation. Communities without a robust, well-maintained road and highway infrastructure generally did not do as well in this survey.

Sometimes specialization is more important

A significant byproduct of the rise in overnight delivery service is the number of companies that are physically locating facilities in proximity to FedEx, UPS or Airborne Express hubs.

Cities like Memphis (site of a major FedEx hub) and Louisville (site of a major UPS hub) have been capitalizing on this advantage for a number of years and, as FedEx and UPS continue to establish regional hubs at airports like Alliance in Fort Worth and the impending one at Greensboro, N.C., so, too, will those cities prosper.

Thats because the growth of these next-day service companies has spawned a virtual industry of companies whose niche, or relative advantage, involves the rapid turnaround of products and services. If your company is located next door to a round-the-clock air delivery facility, thats an advantage that no amount of rail or sea or road access can overcome. The same logic applies to companies that rely most heavily on rail or sea to ship their goods.

Measuring the mega-cities

One thing this survey does not highlight is the combined transportation strengths of the major metroplexes, otherwise known as Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical Areas (CMSA). CMSAs like Los Angeles-Riverside-Orange County appear in the study as three separate MSAs, while the New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island CMSA consists of 15 individual PMSAs.

Clearly, businesses located within the confines of one of these CMSAs can take advantage of the transportation resources of any of the metro areas. In that case, the sum of the resources are, indeed, much bigger than the individual parts. Still, site selection is a local thing and companies need to know where, within the overall huge metroplex, they would be best off locating their next facility.

What does it all mean?

Cities that ranked in the top 100 have a broad transportation infrastructure that is well-suited to having distribution facilities located there. They may not be strong in all four areas (road, rail, water and air), but they are usually pretty good in at least three.

What this study does not, and cannot, address are those specific location factors that necessitate your facility being located, for example, in the Northeast or Southwest. That depends on your particular business requirements. What it does do, however, is compare a metro areas logistic strengths and weaknesses against each of the other 327 metro areas throughout the United States.

For a more complete ranking of all 328 metro areas, please visit our Web site at www.ExpansionManagement.com.

Bill King is the editor of Expansion Management Magazine and can be reached at BillKing@penton.com. Les Gramkow is the research editor of Expansion Management and can be reached at lgramkow@penton.com.