MISSOURI: The Perfect Center
store perishables without spending a for- tune on heating and air conditioning, says UTXL’s Hogan. His company often picks up shipments from underground spaces in the Kansas City area. “There’s nothing like having 100 feet of rock above you and rock all around you,” Hogan says. “There’s one way in and one way out.” Whatever kind of site a company chooses, it will benefit from the state’s business-friendly environment, including affordable taxes and utilities, and a vari- ety of state and local business incentives. According to CNBC, Missouri had the fourth-lowest business costs in the coun-
I-44 CORRIDOR: En Route to Rapid Growth
Providing a link between the Midwest and the Southwest, I-44 connects two major cit- ies, St. Louis and Oklahoma City. The entire corridor, including the regions around Fort Leonard Wood and Joplin, has seen a great deal of growth in recent years. As home to a U.S. Army base that trains 90,000 soldiers a year, Fort Leonard Wood has a strong heritage of logistics activity. “It handles the logistics of bringing in material to house and feed the soldiers, as well as the logistics of moving people in and out,” says Ben Jones, chairman of the Fort Leonard Wood Regional Commerce and Growth Association and president and CEO of America’s Heartland Economic Partnership in Lebanon, Mo. The three-county region that Jones represents offers a unique mix of urban and rural advantages. “We’re big enough to attract companies with sophisticated transportation and distribution networks, such as Emerson Electric, Yamaha, G3, Regal Beloit, and Detroit Tool Metal Products,” Jones says. At the same time, as a rural area, the Fort Leonard Wood Region offers a less expensive alternative to Missouri’s big cities. Southwest of Fort Leonard Wood on I-44, SRC Logistics, based in Springfield, provides a broad range of logistics services, including public and contract warehousing, non-asset- based transportation management, fulfillment, distribution, and reverse logistics. One customer SRC serves in Springfield is John Deere, which formed a $100-million joint ven- ture with the 3PL to receive and remanufacture used engines. Springfield’s central location makes it a perfect place to send engines from dealers across the United States, refurbish them, and send them back. “We couldn’t do this on the East Coast,” says Tim Stack, SRC’s global sourcing manager. “It wouldn’t make sense for companies in California to send engines across the country for remanufacture, then send them all the way back.” That, plus the low cost of labor, persuaded John Deere to keep the operation in Springfield when it bought the joint venture back from SRC. Further along I-44, near the Kansas border, German manufacturer Schaeffler Group recently chose its FAG Bearings plant in Joplin as the site for a new operation that manu- factures heavy bearings for wind turbines and other products. Schaeffler started looking for a location for this business two years ago. “It grew into a search among Schaeffler’s locations in North and South America, Asia, and Europe,” says Rob O’Brian, president of the Joplin Area Chamber of
“ Companies want to be located close to intermodal
try in 2009. Also in that year, the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council found that Missouri enjoyed the country’s sixth-lowest business energy costs. Missouri’s Quality Jobs program encourages business growth with a tax incentive based on the new jobs a com- pany creates. The employer may retain all, or a portion, of the state income taxes withheld from employees’ paychecks, or it may take tax credits. The details depend on the kind of business involved and its location. “The program is incentivizing companies to come in and create jobs that are, by the state’s definition, high quality,” says Chung at The Missouri Partnership. “Many states, obviously, offer that sort of operations because often transportation costs outweigh real estate costs. ” – Fred Reynolds, vice president, development, CenterPoint Properties
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Commerce. In 2009, Schaeffler started investing $40 million to revamp the Joplin facility for the new product line. Other businesses attracted by Joplin’s proximity to Kansas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas, and its access to four-lane high- ways and railroads, might find space in the 670-acre
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Crossroads Business and Distribution Park. With financing from the state, a partner- ship between the City of Joplin, Jasper County, and a special road district is conducting $6 million worth of road construction at the park. “The construction will widen the one- mile stretch of state highway that runs from the park to the interchange with 71 and I-44,” O’Brian says. Besides improving access to the existing park, the new construction will open access to another 120 acres for future development.
92 Inbound Logistics • September 2009
FACING LOGISTICS CHALLENGES? USE IL’S 3PL EXPERTS AND
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