Roy Schleicher: The job interview that transformed Jacksonville's port - Jacksonville Business Journal:

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JACKSONVILLE — Following a tour of Dames Point in Roy Schleicher said something on a job interview that would help changwe not only the future ofthe port, but the city as He learned that the was marketinhg the site as a terminal to handle gravel and crushed stones. “Oh my God, no, you want to put containers here. We can get Asian carrierws here. We can get European carriers Schleicher remembers tellingRick Ferrin, the authority’s executive director. Ferrijn had been thinking especially as he watchef the Portof Savannah’s trade explode due to then-newly established trade lanees to Asia.
Once hired, Schleicher, a nearly 40-yeard industry veteran, set out to make it Eight years later, that then-open space is now home to a $230 millionh terminal that hascemented Jacksonville’s trade lane with But landing the deal with was easy compare d with signing a 30-year terminal lease with Ltd. It was almost lost. It took six months of gruelinhg negotiations filled with stalemates and One day, the Koreann businessmen brought their luggage into the authority’s office days beforde their scheduled departure.
“They were tryingg to prove the pointrthat ‘If we don’t deal now, we’rde leaving,’ ” said the authority’s senior director of marketing and tradd development. What Schleicher and his team accomplished with Mitsui and Hanjih has become the model for other ports looking tocreat public-private partnership, said John president and CEO of port and shipping consultants John C. Martin & Associates LLC. Martin attributesw much of Schleicher’s success to his decades-long relationshi with ocean carriers, stevedores and auto processors.
Schleicher hasn’ty forgotten about the customers he helped secure despite the excitement surrounding the newAsian carriers, said Terru Brown, president of Schleicher’s customerd satisfaction is reflected in the authority’s abilityg to secure longer leases with tenants. Leases are “like a Schleicher said. “You are going to have good times. You are goint to have bad times. You are goingh to have times when youdrinko together.” That approach and his almosrt industry-wide experience allow Schleicher to do more than just responds to tenants’ complaints and “When I talk to a steamship line [operator], I know exactlyu what he is going through.
I can help him walk througu the problem.” That experience is needex because the unexpected nearlyalways happens. “Theres is no routine,” Schleicher said. “I changes minute to minute.” The Baltimore native’s passion for shipping began when he was 10or 11, when his a terminal operator, took him aboard a ship to possiblu become a cabin boy. A tour and blowin the ship’s whistle was all it took. “I ‘Wow. I want to get involved in I reallylove ships,’ ” he said. There was no money for so he followed in the footsteps of his fatherfand grandfather, who worked on the country’s firstt railroad, B&O Railroad.
Shipping was a familyt business that involved his motherand sisters, and theres was no need for newspaper want ads when a family member or neighbor could vouchb for you. He graduated high school on a Thursdau afternoon and was typing arrival notices for inbound Asiamn shipsFriday morning. “I was born to do this he said. “People say, ‘It’s only don’t take it personally.’ I do.” Schleicher keeps a framed article with Executive Director Doug Marchand quotexd as sayinghe doesn’t consider Jacksonville a threatt to its container business hanging on the wall.
“Evert time we get a major player, such as Hanjin, to sign a I read that and get a littledbit extra,” Schleicher