Alaska's transportation leaders: they ship everything from soup to construction supplies, linking Alaska to the Lower 48 and beyond.

• Author: Jones, Patricia
• Position: Freight Consolidators

Although Alaska is rich in raw natural resources, the Last Frontier lacks by its own means many pro ducts and supplies needed to support the state's various industries. That, combined with Alaska's remote location, thousands of miles from other states in the Union, has helped to create a specialized, highly competitive freight consolidation industry within the state.

Whether it's construction companies requiring fabrication materials, retail stores shopping for new merchandise, oil or mining companies needing specialized equipment or military personnel moving to or from the state--all are major markets for Alaska's freight consolidators.

"We handle a little bit of everything soup to nuts, all kinds of cargo," said Nick Lohman, general manager for Alaska Traffic Consultants Inc., a Seattle-based company that started consolidating construction materials for a Fairbanks-based construction firm back in 1956.

Then, owners of Burgess Construction asked Seattle resident Bill Stanley to act as a freight consolidator--gathering together shipments from suppliers in the Lower 48 and assembling a cost-efficient load to be delivered via ocean-going vessels.

That friendship-based service evolved into a formal company that provides personalized freight consolidation and shipping service to the construction, natural resource, retail and military sectors in Alaska, Lohman said.

BRINGING SHIPMENTS TOGETHER

"We may have a customer who wants to consolidate 20 shipments from 20 different places, and not pay for each individual shipment, so we bring all 20 together," Lohman said. "Then you've got one big shipment that's more economic."

While the bulk of that business goes to Anchorage or Fairbanks-based companies, Alaska Traffic Consultants does handle freight consolidation services for summertime barge deliveries to remote villages.

"In recent years, there's not been so much of a dramatic drop in the winter months, but we still see a seasonal increase from March or April through November--it's much heavier than the rest of the year," Lohman said.

From the Seattle consolidation warehouse, freight bound for Alaska is loaded either on the ocean-going steamships or the slower barges.

"We're one of the few companies that uses all the different carriers," Lohman said. "Depending on the customer, there are different needs for transit times."

While Alaska Traffic Consultants does provide southbound shipping service from Alaska to Seattle, it amounts to very little of...