Oregon has just one shipping terminal that provides international container service: the Port of Portland’s Terminal 6 . If that service were to end, Oregon would become the only coastal state in the U.S. without a container terminal, a fact that makes the relative success of T6 that much more important. Even so, it has frequently struggled to stay profitable over its lifespan, punctuated by a brief period in 2024 when it looked as though the worst might actually come to pass for the crucial shipping hub.
In April of 2024, supply chain stakeholders and local lawmakers alike were rocked by an announcement from the Port of Portland, stating that Terminal 6 would be shutting down container service by October. Although the terminal would eventually get a reprieve a month later, even the threat of a closure was a wake-up call for the state’s leaders.
“The alarm bells had been ringing for a very long time, but that’s when the alarm bells became like a fire alarm,” says Oregon state Rep. Shelly Boshart Davis.
As someone who has worked with the Port of Portland as both a lawmaker and owner of her family’s trucking company, Boshart Davis is no stranger to the struggles of T6. Geographically, she points out, the Port of Portland is situated more than 100 miles upriver from the ocean, which means there are limits on the size and shape of vessels that can call the shipping hub. Boshart Davis believes the biggest challenge the port has faced, though, is a lack of reliability and consistency, headlined by Manila-based logistics company ICTSI’s ill-fated tenure as T6’s operator between 2010 and 2017.
“ICTSI ruled with an iron fist, and that didn’t work,” Boshart Davis recalls, referencing years of bitter disputes between the company and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). The year after ICTSI signed a 25-year lease to operate the terminal, the company quickly ran afoul of the ILWU, when it used members of a different union to plug in refrigerated container ships. The ILWU responded by conducting a series of work slowdowns and stoppages in protest, as the fight dragged out for more than a decade in court.
Ultimately, the ensuing delays from the slowdowns led to the terminal’s biggest customer, Hanjin Shipping, pulling out of the port altogether in 2015. A month later, T6’s second largest customer, Hapag-Lloyd, followed suit. Finally, ICTSI terminated its lease early in 2017, leaving the Port of Portland to manage T6 itself, making it the only container terminal on the West Coast with a public operator, and leaving it exposed to financial risks that would typically be shared with private partners.
As a public operator, the port estimates that it has sustained $30 million in losses from its container operations over the last three years, including $12.3 million for the 2024-25 fiscal year alone. In order to ensure that T6 can eventually become financially viable, Boshart Davis says, the port needs to find a private operator for the terminal. If that doesn’t happen, “I think the doors get shut,” she warns. Without container service at the Port of Portland, shippers in and out the state will have to make up the difference by putting more trucks on the roads, and having drivers opt for the onerous 350-mile roundtrip journey to and from neighboring Washington ports in Seattle and Tacoma.
“You’re adding thousands of containers to the road going north and south when we have a working port right next door,” Boshart Davis says, warning of more congestion on freeways, higher levels of greenhouse gases, and added costs from having to hire more drivers.
The good news for the Port of Portland is that there are still signs of life for T6, following months of advocacy from local businesses and lawmakers like Boshart Davis. In May, Oregon Governor Tina Kotek announced that she would be allocating $40 million in capital investments to keep the terminal open in the near term, while setting aside another $35 million in the state’s proposed 2025-2027 biennial budget. Longer term, the port and its various stakeholders released a 49-page business plan for T6 in August, prioritizing the search for a new private operator, in addition to negotiating with ocean carriers to increase vessel allocations and raise container rates, and setting a goal to double container volumes at the terminal by 2032. And while there’s still a long road ahead for Terminal 6, the outlook for saving container service in Oregon is rosier now than it’s been in years.
