As container volumes climbed in Savannah and trade patterns shifted, a major South Atlantic terminal found its yard operations overwhelmed by congestion that extended from the stack to the gate. The lack of alignment between vessel discharge, yard planning and truck arrivals created unstable turn times, straining relationships with carriers and drayage partners and put regional competitiveness at risk.

Tellen Advisors was engaged to restore control without relying on new acreage or major capital investment. The Tellen Advisors team conducted a detailed review of yard flows, gate procedures and equipment deployment, mapping how containers moved compared with how the systems assumed they moved. Through this work, Tellen Advisors pinpointed where misaligned priorities and legacy practices were creating choke points across the operation.

Working side by side with terminal leadership and front-line supervisors, Tellen Advisors then redesigned the traffic hierarchy inside the yard, separating high-volume, time-sensitive moves from exception handling and rework. The team implemented a new operating cadence that synchronized gate appointment patterns with stacking strategies and crane deployment, supported by clear rules of engagement for dispatch and control room teams.

The terminal regained a predictable rhythm of operations, with trucks cycling through the facility on a more stable pattern and vessels working against yards that were prepared in advance. By unlocking capacity within the existing footprint, Tellen Advisors helped the operator rebuild service reliability, protect commercial relationships and position the terminal as a precise, high-performance node in the broader logistics network.