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"This has been a very good year for us," said Carlile president Harry McDonald.
The new, larger facility has many advantages not built into the Anchorage facility near Ship Creek.
"This is similar to our facility in Anchorage, but much larger," said Linda Leary, who is vice president of marketing and sales for Carlile in Tacoma.
The 65,000-square-foot facility has 50,000 square feet of cross-dock loading and warehouse ability with 80 doors.
In comparison, the Anchorage Carlile facility is 18,000 square feet.
The new facility is U.S. Customs-bonded, and has a chill and freeze holding area, as well as a rail spur for loading and unloading rail boxcars or flatbeds.
Only a half-mile from the Totem Ocean Trailer Express terminal at the Port of Tacoma, the Carlile facility also offers heavy haul capabilities.
"With our rail spur line we will be able to offload goods from the container ships and reload onto boxcars or flat cars and ship it to domestic markets, or vice-versa," Leary said.
The Carlile facility also possesses the ability to load and ship international freight.
"This will allow us to cross-load freight from foreign countries and ship it on our trucks or load it onto rail cars," Leary said.
Leary, who moved from Anchorage to Seattle, has been working on this project for the last five years.
The construction for the terminal started in May, and Carlile was to move its 100 employees to the Port of Tacoma from Federal Way, Wash., in mid-December.
With 30 trucks located at the new facility, Carlile not only hopes to move freight and cargo from the ports of Tacoma and Seattle to Alaska, but to gain some market share in the Northwest.
Leary said that Carlile is working for many companies also located in Alaska.
"We are working for many companies that we hauled for in Alaska, that either don't want to operate in this heavily regulated industry due to regulations, or are customers of ours from Alaska," Leary said.
Leary says the Port of Tacoma is predicting 84 percent growth in the next year.
"We think our trans-loading and rail spur will not only work well for local shipments, it will help expedite shipments to Alaska from Washington," Leary said.
To be of service to the local area, Carlile will also offer public weigh scales.
"The public truck scale at our new location will also be there for other trucks to use," Leary said. "We wanted to offer this as a service to the community."
The new Carlile location also offers heavy shipping and lowboys for moving from point to point.
"We can also move the big ugly stuff for the local market with our heavy haul division," Leary said.
Calling the new development a truly inter-modal facility, Carlile will show off it's new loading docks at its grand opening Jan. 23 from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. at 2301 Taylor Way in Tacoma.
Rob Stapleton can be reached at rob.stapleton@alaskajournal.com.
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