For several hundred years, up until just after World War II, cargo moved up and down the East Coast of North America by ships and boats of a range of sizes and shapes.  When the interstate highways were built, all but most bulk cargoes  shifted to trucks.  Now there is an effort to rebuld the “American marine highway.”   American Feeder Lines, a New York based shipping company, has launching  a “New England to Halifax Shuttle,” a weekly service connecting Boston, Portland, Maine, and Halifax via container feeder ships.   After having seen so many shipping companies in the United States shutting down, (including several of my ex-employers,) it is refreshing to see a new operation starting up.

Short-haul ships with a long view

From the American Feeder Lines website:

AFL’s fleet of ships will:

• Introduce and establish the Hub and Spoke container network in the U.S.,
• Be a logical replacement for the existing aging and obsolete Jones Act fleet,
• Facilitate the deployment of the fleet of “Super Ships” now being delivered to the International liner companies along the U.S. East and Gulf coasts. In the future, AFL’s feeders will seamlessly distribute large numbers of containers unloaded at one time from the Super Ships that will soon be able make direct Asian/U.S. East/Gulf coast calls via the widened Panama canal, and
• offer a “green” coastal seaborne transportation solution to U.S. importers and exporters who rely on the international container liner system to move their goods around the world.