Bob Wydra spends his days overseeing the transition of a former U.S. Army base into an extensive intermodal transportation facility in the heart of America. From his second floor office in the former Granite City, Ill., Army Depot, just across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, he runs a 1,200-acre, multi-use development that handles nearly 2,500 barges (roughly 4 million tons) of cargo annually, along with 32,000 rail cars and 40,000 trucks.

His is just one of several inland port facilities in the St. Louis metro area. Combined, the various ports of the St. Louis metro handle slightly more than 32 million tons of cargo each year.

“With globalization, transportation becomes even more critical to the site selection process and where businesses locate,” said Wydra, the executive director of the Tri-City Regional Port District in Granite City, Ill. “Seventy percent of what comes across our docks is destined for ports all over the world. We’re connected to the river, the railroad and the interstate highway system, so we take advantage of all the freight modes.”

The MidAmerica St. Louis Airport, co-located on nearby Scott Air Force Base, is also a major air cargo facility with an 11,000-foot runway.

Finding a cheaper way to ship product is a continuous goal of business executives everywhere. That’s why facilities such as the Tri-City Port District are so important.

“The Mississippi River opens up just below St. Louis,” Wydra said. “Barges have to come down the Missouri, Illinois and Mississippi rivers on smaller tows but, once they get below Lock 27, there aren’t any more locks all the way down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.”

Why is this important? Cargo capacity.

According to the Iowa Department of Transportation, one barge can carry the same volume of cargo as 15 jumbo hopper rail cars or 58 large semi tractor-trailers.

While that represents a huge advantage, it’s not nearly as huge as once you get below Lock 27 and can start stringing together, say, a 15-barge tow, which gives you the same cargo capacity as 225 rail cars or 870 large semi tractor-trailers.

With today’s fuel prices, that’s a significant advantage when it comes to long-haul transportation costs. And that’s just one of the many factors growing businesses must take into consideration before deciding where to locate a new manufacturing or distribution facility.

For that reason, Expansion Management and Logistics Today magazines have teamed up for the past six years to produce our annual Logistics Quotient™ ranking of the most logistics-friendly metros in the United States.

The study evaluates the overall logistics infrastructure of our nation’s 362 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) based on 10 major categories, including the transportation and warehousing (T&W) industry, T&W work force, road infrastructure, road congestion, road conditions, interstate highway access, vehicle taxes and fees, railroad access, water port access, and air cargo access.

Topping this year’s list as the most logistics-friendly metro in the U.S. is the New York-Newark-Edison, N.Y.-N.J., MSA, followed by Houston, Texas; Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn.; Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, Texas; and Kansas City, Mo.-Kan. Rounding out the best 10 are St. Louis; Chicago-Naperville-Joliet, Ill.; Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor, Ohio; Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, Mass.; and San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, Calif.

How We Measure The Logistics Infrastructure

The Logistics Quotient ranks metro areas according to 10 major categories, as described below. Together, the categories give the user a comprehensive overview of the many facets that make up a region’s overall logistics infrastructure.

Transportation & Warehousing Industry.

The best metros in this category are New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Miami. Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth tied for fifth.

Transportation & Warehousing Work Force. This category attempts to get a feel for the depth and cost of the metrowide T&W work force and includes the total annual payroll of companies in the T&W industry sector, total number of employees, average salary and T&W revenue per employee. Information comes from the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Interstate Highway Access. This category focuses on the interstate highway infrastructure and includes the number of interstate highways that pass through the metro area, as well as the number of interstate auxiliary routes (i.e., beltways, bypass, etc.). Information comes from the Federal Highway Administration.

The best metros in this category are New York, Chicago, Baltimore, Dallas-Fort Worth and St. Louis.

Road and Bridge Conditions. This category includes the average roughness of the metro area’s roads, as well as the percentage of bridges that are obsolete or structurally deficient, including five-year trends. Information comes from the Federal Highway Administration.

The best states in this category are New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Florida and Connecticut.

Road Density and Congestion. Whether a metro area has adequate roads depends upon the amount of traffic using those roads. Clearly, what is considered an adequate infrastructure for Huntsville, Ala., is clearly insufficient for a city like Atlanta. This category includes such things as roadway miles per capita, total miles of freeways, average daily freeway traffic and average daily traffic per freeway lane. Information comes from the Federal Highway Administration.

The best metros in this category are Pueblo, Colo.; Weirton-Steubenville, W.Va.-Ohio; Wausau, Wis.; Wichita Falls, Texas; and San Angelo, Texas.

Road Infrastructure. This category attempts to look into the future in terms of keeping up with an adequate road infrastructure and includes public roads mileage, capital outlay for roads and bridges, highway maintenance per mile, and spending for highway law enforcement. Information comes from the Federal Highway Administration.

The best metros in this category are Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and St. Louis.

Vehicle Taxes & Fees. This category includes highway user taxes and fees, as well as motor fuel excise taxes. Data on state and federal highway user taxes and fees was provided by the American Transportation Research Institute (as of April 2005), while data on motor fuel excise taxes was provided by the Federation of Tax Administrators (as of January 2006).

The states with the lowest annual state and federal highway truck user fees are Alaska, Georgia, Oklahoma, Hawaii and South Carolina.

The best five metros in this category are Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and St. Louis.

Water Port Infrastructure. This category includes total tonnage for all ports located within the confines of the metro area and comes from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Waterborne Commerce Statistics Center.

The best five metros in this category are New Orleans; Houston; New York; Baton Rouge, La.; and Chicago.

The best five metros in this category are New York; Memphis, Tenn.; Los Angeles; Miami; and Chicago.

How To Use These Rankings

One of the standard features of Expansion Management’s various annual metro “Quotient” studies is the awarding of the “5-Star” designation to the top 20 percent of the 362 MSAs. Metros that earn this distinction can rightfully consider themselves to be among the elite cities when it comes to that particular category.

It is important to remember that the overall rankings represent the combined strength of an MSA in all categories. However, for your company’s purposes, perhaps not every category is important. That’s why you should look at a metro’s ranking in each category and assign your own weighting to that category based on its relative importance to your company.

Sometimes, it’s the mode of transportation that is most important.

For example, if you require overnight package delivery, then you should probably give some serious consideration to hub locations like Memphis, Louisville or Atlanta. If you ship a lot of product by rail, then places like Chicago or St. Louis start to look good.

More often, though, it’s proximity to market or suppliers that takes precedence.

For example, if your market is the western U.S., then you probably won’t be looking closely at New York or Boston, even if those metros scored higher in terms of their overall logistics infrastructure.

In the final analysis, what these rankings do is compare a metro area’s strengths and weaknesses against each of the other 361 metro areas in the United States.

What it cannot do is address those specific business requirements that are causing you to open a new facility.

For that part, you have to fill in the details.

Bill King is the chief editor of Expansion Management magazine and can be reached at BillKing@Penton.com.

Michael Keating is the senior research editor of Expansion Management magazine and can be reached at mkeating@Penton.com.