Cargo

Joseph Moye Eddins Sr., an Army Air Forces pilot who flew cargo missions over the Himalayas after World War II and later became a vice president of the Maryland Casualty Co., died Friday of heart failure at the Riderwood Erickson Retirement Community in Silver Spring. The former Towson resident was 83. Mr. Eddins was born and raised in Troy, Ala., and during his senior year of high school passed the exams for the Army Air Forces cadet-training program. After graduating from high school in 1943, he reported to Dos Palos, Calif.

Officials for the East Coast's largest railroad have outlined a package of "significant capital investments" that they say are needed for Baltimore to accommodate the giant marine terminal state officials hope to build in Dundalk.To handle the cargo that shipping companies Sea-Land Service Inc. and Maersk Inc. might bring to Baltimore, the CSX railroad needs improvements costing as much as $575 million, company officials say.Projects include new tracks to Philadelphia and Washington and a new rail yard in northern New Jersey.

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia -- The snow fell right to left, tiny whitecaps snapped on the water and fog whistles groaned long in the distance, all of it whipping Halifax Harbour into a modest frenzy. And, inside his waterfront office, David Bellefontaine was just as excited.He stretched out a map, put a finger on the Atlantic Ocean and dragged it around McNabs Island into a round anchorage called Bedford Basin, just past the center of town. The whole swath, from the ocean inland, was at least 60 feet deep, he explained.

MIAMI -- Federal charges are expected within days against American Airlines, accusing Miami's No. 1 air carrier of endangering passengers by mishandling hazardous cargo and carrying it illegally on its jets.It could be the first time in aviation history that a major airline is charged criminally for transporting hazardous materials.Combustibles, pesticides, corrosives and other substances -- such as cases of flammable perfumes and dangerous hair spray canisters -- are some of the materials that have been loaded improperly, according to federal sources close to the case.

THESE are good times at Baltimore-Washington International Airport. Cargo business is booming. The air facility in Linthicum should see 15 million passengers pass through its gates this year. It's the East Coast crew center for one of the nation's fastest growing airlines.This has been a summer of successes. Southwest Airlines opened a crew base that could bring 1,000 jobs and $30 million in tax revenues. Then the airline announced its latest expansion -- service to Hartford, Conn., part of Southwest's aggressive push into Northeast markets from BWI.Next month, Southwest begins direct service to Phoenix and Las Vegas as it adds longer routes to its 86 daily flights from BWI. Can the West Coast be far behind?

Late in 1998, China Ocean Shipping Co. decided to follow many of the world's other major shipping lines out of Baltimore. It canceled the Baltimore stop on its service to the Far East, choosing instead the more accessible piers in Norfolk, Va. One of the port's biggest customers went where so many others went years ago.Yet as 1999 unfolds, the Maryland Port Administration is more optimistic about the city's maritime future than at any time in decades.This...

MIAMI -- Overhead, the cargo planes come one after the other, tracing the same flight path that will be followed about 35 times a day, more than twice as often as normal. On the ground, trucks stand ready for dispatch to the fronts.It is an airlift of massive proportions, equal parts military campaign and romantic folly.All may be fair in love and war, but come Valentine's Day, it takes the techniques of the latter to celebrate the former.The goal of this particular mission: to deliver millions of flowers from Colombia and Ecuador into the hands of Valentines across America, all on the same day."

Victory Chimes has come home to celebrate turning 100.The 170-foot, three-masted schooner was once a mainstay of the Chesapeake Bay, calling Baltimore home for 30 years as it hauled lumber, fertilizer, coal, oysters and other cargo.Now a passenger vessel based in Rockland, Maine -- and believed to be the largest historic vessel still sailing in the country -- Victory Chimes is one of 47 ships scheduled to take part Thursday in the 10th annual Great Chesapeake Bay Schooner Race from Annapolis to Norfolk.

The Norwegian steamship company Wilhelmsen Lines will move its North American headquarters out of Baltimore later this year as part of a merger announced yesterday with its Swedish competitor, Wallenius Lines.The two companies will merge to form the largest operator of automobile-carrying and "roll-on/roll-off" cargo ships in the world, and combine their U.S. headquarters in Woodcliff Lake, N.J.Each line brings more than 100 ships to the port of Baltimore annually, ranking them among the port's largest customers.

GALE-FORCE winds and rocky seas that placed the port of Baltimore in peril are subsiding.Not only has the port weathered these storms -- rail deregulation, labor conflicts, loss of shipping lines and a shrinking number of cargo vessels worldwide -- but Baltimore has started to redefine itself as an important East Coast maritime center.The stakes are high -- for Baltimore, and the state.Nearly 18,000 people earn their living directly through the port. Forty percent of those people call the counties home.

Salary: : $30/hour Age: : 49 Years on the job: : 31 How he got started: : Knowing he didn't want to go into the military or on to college, Tony Revels began working at the port of Baltimore as a longshoreman before he graduated from high school. His father also worked at the port as a longshoreman, and the two had a chance to work side by side until his father, Jesse, who has since passed away, retired in 1993. Revels calls that experience "awesome." The job is a union position, and Revels belongs to the International Longshoremen's Association Local 333. Typical day: : "Every day is different," Revels said about his job. He usually works 50 to 60 hours a week, but his days and hours vary and are determined by the number of vessels that come in and out of Baltimore's Seagirt Marine Terminal or Dundalk Marine Terminal.

Maryland Air National Guard cargo crews are prepping for an expected deployment to Afghanistan next year, flying a critical mission of air-dropping supplies to U.S. troops fighting in remote locations. Delivering ammunition, rations and water by parachute from the Guard's C-130J cargo planes is increasingly necessary in Afghanistan, not just because troops are being scattered to small, local bases as part of a new strategy, but also because of the growing danger that ground convoys will be attacked by Taliban insurgents, senior U.S. officers said.

The Martha Lewis, one of Maryland's few remaining skipjacks, will return to its home port in Havre de Grace today with a cargo of watermelons from the Eastern Shore. The crew promises to give away dozens of hefty melons in exchange for a donation to the Chesapeake Heritage Conservancy, the ship's owner. "Be here about 6 p.m., and the crew will sign the watermelon, too," said Mac Taylor, a volunteer sailor who was making the three-day trip to St. Michaels and back. The ship, flying its Maryland and Havre de Grace flags, sailed from its berth in Tydings Park Thursday, loaded with about 400 pounds of grapes, harvested that same morning at the nearby Mount Felix Vineyard.

WASHINGTON - Tankers filled with deadly chemicals are likely to continue to roll through Baltimore and other major cities despite new federal rules initially aimed at reducing the risk of catastrophic accidents or terrorist threats by sending much of the cargo through less-populated areas. Beginning next month, railroads must analyze alternative routes for shipping chlorine and other hazardous materials, and pick the path they find to be the safest and most secure, as well as practical and "commercially viable."

Propelled by a weakening dollar, a surge of exports - especially autos - drove the value of cargo moving through the port of Baltimore last year to a record $41.9 billion, though tonnage increased less than 1 percent, the Maryland Port Administration said yesterday. The gain of more than 13 percent overall was a $5 billion increase over 2006, according to the annual report released by the MPA. An 80 percent increase in autos, to nearly 294,000, made Baltimore the top vehicle exporter in the nation, eclipsing Jacksonville, Fla., the MPA said.

Cargo handled at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport -- and by U.S. airlines nationwide -- has slipped to its lowest level in at least four years, yet another tangible result of an ailing economy and skyrocketing fuel costs. The decrease is part of a general falloff in domestic cargo volume, whether by air, rail or truck, as consumers reduce spending and businesses ship fewer finished goods and buy less equipment and materials. Because cargo is a key barometer of economic health, a downturn could influence the Federal Reserve as it ponders whether to further cut interest rates to spur growth at a time when inflation pressures are rising.

WASHINGTON -- British Airways PLC and Korean Air Lines Co. Ltd. were each fined $300 million in a federal District Court yesterday after admitting they reached secret agreements with competitors in setting fuel surcharges. Both companies cooperated with investigators and escaped penalties that could have been two to three times higher, said U.S. District Judge John D. Bates. Yesterday's guilty pleas, announced Aug. 1, end the first criminal prosecutions arising from a multinational antitrust investigation of the air transportation industry.

Joseph Moye Eddins Sr., an Army Air Forces pilot who flew cargo missions over the Himalayas after World War II and later became a vice president of the Maryland Casualty Co., died Friday of heart failure at the Riderwood Erickson Retirement Community in Silver Spring. The former Towson resident was 83. Mr. Eddins was born and raised in Troy, Ala., and during his senior year of high school passed the exams for the Army Air Forces cadet-training program. After graduating from high school in 1943, he reported to Dos Palos, Calif.

Dorothy Ella Sherer, an avid dancer and retired office manager of a cargo inspection business, died of cancer July 25 at Oak Crest Village in Parkville. The former Hamilton resident was 89. Born Dorothy Ella Blatt in Baltimore and raised on Ridgely Street in Pigtown, she was a 1936 graduate of Southern High School, where she assisted the principal with secretarial work. Friends said that Mrs. Sherer excelled as a typist and office worker. She joined the National Cargo Bureau in downtown Baltimore and became its office manager before retiring many years ago. Throughout her life, she enjoyed dancing, and she met her future husband, Neil Robbins Sherer, a Baltimore City inventory manager, at a dance at Gwynn Oak Park.

James J. White returns today after a two-year absence to head one of the state's largest economic engines, the Helen Delich Bentley Port of Baltimore. He served as executive director of the Maryland Port Administration for six years but left for the private sector in 2005 after feuding with his bosses in the Republican Ehrlich administration. The Democratic O'Malley Administration asked him to come back. And the port commission gave its stamp of approval to him and his salary of $252,000 a year.