Port Authority of New York and New Jersey
- The CMA CGM Marco Polo is the largest container ship to visit the US East Coast.
- It can carry a total of 16,022 containers that ship goods such as furniture, foodstuffs, and clothing.
- Its arrival was possible due to a $1.7 billion project to raise the roadway of the Bayonne Bridge.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
A new record was just set at the Port of New York and New Jersey.
The CMA CGM Marco Polo arrived in New York Harbor on Thursday morning after completing a three-week journey from China through the Suez Canal. It's the largest container vessel to ever visit, or call, the East Coast of the US and was the largest in the world when it was built in 2013.
A total of 16,022 20-foot-equivalent containers, also known as TEUs, can fit on the ship that's roughly the size of the Empire State Building. That many containers could cover 61 miles if put in a straight line, almost the width of New Jersey.
Inside the containers are a variety of consumer goods including home goods, furniture, and construction materials, bound for US customers. Over 10,000 shipping companies and customers are represented by the containers on the ship.
Port Authority of New York and New Jersey
While it's in the port, 5,000 TEUs will be offloaded onto a constant stream of trucks and then transported either by road or rail to their final destinations. Over 140 million people are served by the Port of New York and New Jersey and even destinations as far as Chicago are a short two-day train ride away.
Once the offloading process is complete, new containers will be put on the ship to be delivered at other ports of call as the Marco Polo continues its around-the-world journey. Popular exports from the US include cotton, forest products, agricultural supplies, and foodstuffs.
Before arriving in the US, the ship made stops in Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, and Canada as part of CMA CGM's Columbus JAX service. The Port of Savannah in Georgia will be the last port of call before the long trip back to Asia.
A record-setting pandemic
The Port of New York and New Jersey just celebrated a similar milestone in September when the CMA CGM Brazil broke the record now being broken by the Marco Polo.
Larger mega-ships have only recently been able to access the East Coast's largest port since 2019. Standing in the way between the port and the massive freighters has been the Bayonne Bridge, connecting Bayonne, New Jersey with Staten Island, New York.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey spent $1.7 billion to raise the roadway of the bridge and allow larger ships to pass underneath. Engineers also dredged the bottom of the Kill van Kull, using explosives to break up the bedrock below, to increase the depth of the port's waterways to 50 feet.
Port Authority of New York and New Jersey
Ships with capacities as much as 18,000 TEUs can now access the Port of New York and New Jersey, giving shipping companies another option when serving the US. Some ships have been choosing to call the East Coast port instead of waiting in the backlog of ships outside the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, as Insider's Brittany Chang saw firsthand.
Read More: 22 companies cashing in on the brutal log-jam at America's busiest ports
And the Bayonne Bridge project was completed not a moment too soon. A backlog of consumer goods like furniture has been building up during the pandemic, and larger ships are required to meet the newfound demand.
The Marco Polo is just one ship that's helping chip away at that backlog so consumers can receive the long-awaited goods they've ordered during the e-commerce boom of the pandemic.
And while the Marco Polo's arrival is a monumental occasion for the port, the ever-growing demand for mega-ships will likely mean an even larger ship may break the record once again in a few month's time.