Doug Marchand ’70
knows how to get
things moving.
As executive
director for the Georgia
Ports Authority,
Marchand oversaw the comings and
goings of 2.7 million boxes of containerized
cargo at the country’s fourth-largest
container port last year. Georgia poultry,
kaolin clay and forest products headed out
toward countries on the Pacific Rim and
elsewhere. Clothing and electronics headed
in, bound for retailers up and down the
East Coast.
It wasn’t always this way. When
Marchand arrived in 1994, the Georgia
Ports Authority enjoyed a strong export
business, especially in forest products,
kaolin clay and frozen poultry. Missing
were the imports. He decided to change
things at the quasi-state agency that oversees
deepwater ports at Savannah and
Brunswick and two inland barge ports.
“We set out to market to the beneficial
owners of the cargo,” Marchand said.
“We worked with the big box retailers and
were able to land a couple of those. Then
imports were driving the ships to come to
Savannah. You could take that empty box
and reload it with the traditional cargo.
Once we got it rolling and had the ships
coming, more imports would start riding
on the same ships. It started feeding on
itself. The more ships you got, the more
cargo you got. The more cargo you got,
the more ships you got.”
As a result, everyone benefited from
lower shipping costs and a more efficient
operation. Other ports around the country
saw the wisdom of Marchand’s
approach—now known in the industry as the Savannah model—and began to copy it.
The competition has not hurt the Georgia ports though. Building on the waterfront
success, many retailers, including Home Depot, Target, Wal-Mart and Ikea, have
invested in the area by locating major distribution centers in Savannah.
“The non-traditional approach was to
market to the people who were actually
importing from around the world,”
Marchand said. “The strategy is still working
and can continue to work given the natural
assets and abundance of land in close
proximity to the port that we enjoy.”
A native of Galveston, Marchand grew
up in a port city and got his introduction to
port operations before he completed his
bachelor of business administration degree
in marketing at Lamar. He spent the summer
before his senior year working at the
Port of Galveston, which led to the offer of
a full-time job upon graduation. He started
work the day after his last final exam.
“None of my family was in this
business, but it was always interesting
to see it and be on the periphery of
it,” he said.
Marchand advanced from his
entry-level job to serve as general
operations manager in Galveston
before leaving in 1984 to become
managing director at the Port of
Corpus Christi. He returned two
years later as general manager and
port director. Then, in 1994, he was
approached about the opportunity in
Georgia. Marchand said he was not
looking for a job, but the more he
looked at the potential there, the more interested
he became.
The aspects of the port industry that
first attracted Marchand to the field are still
what keep him engaged in his work today.
“It’s a lot of different things every day.
There’s absolutely no monotony to it,” he
said. He even enjoys the extensive travel his
job requires, mainly to countries where
ocean carriers serving his ports are based.
That includes countries such as Japan,
China, South Korea, Taiwan, Norway,
Germany, France, Israel, Kuwait,
Switzerland, Australia and New Zealand
where imports originate and exports end up.
“I enjoy the challenge,” Marchand said.
“If you own and operate this place, how can
you make it better? How can you get more
out of it? How can you put more people to
work and at the same time generate an
income that you can plow back into your
facilities to make them better? I enjoy the
challenge as well as the whole scene that we
operate in.”
Marchand’s dedication to and expertise
in his field have attracted recognition from
his peers. He was inducted this year into the
International Maritime Hall of Fame, one of
the few port directors to ever receive the
honor. He has held numerous leadership
positions in the American Association of
Port Authorities and in the 1990s helped
establish the organization’s professional port
manager accreditation program, an accreditation
he holds. Recognizing the importance
of succession planning and the value of the
early opportunities he received, Marchand
has made training for the next generation a
priority. Each summer, 12 to 15 college students
are chosen through a competitive
process to work as interns throughout the
Georgia Ports Authority’s operations. “It
gives them an opportunity to see if this field
is something for them and gives us a chance
to look them over as potential employees,”
he said.
Marchand’s business leadership has
even had an impact in his own family. His
son, Jack, received his degree in logistics and
intermodal transportation from Georgia
Southern University and is now a manager
with Ikea’s operations in Savannah. When
he chose his major, Marchand asked, “Are
you sure?” His son answered, “Yeah, I don’t
know anything else.”
The rest of the family remains in Texas.
Marchand and his wife, Brenda Gail
Marchand, return to the Galveston area a
few times a year to visit relatives, including
daughter Kristen, who is employed by Rolls
Royce Global Marine, grandson Preston,
Doug’s siblings and Brenda’s parents.
Marchand’s brother, George Marchand
’64, deserves the credit for Doug’s decision
to attend Lamar, where his younger sister,
Cathy (Marchand) Nerios also received her
degree. Sister-in-law Leah Rae (Magliolo)
Marchand, brother-in-law Manuel Nerios,
and two cousins, James D. Neaton and
Dennis J. Neaton, also earned degrees from
Lamar. His niece, Amanda Gail Piletere, is
now a junior at Lamar.
Doug had been accepted to both the
University of Texas and Lamar. His brother
urged him to choose Lamar because of the
smaller size and his own good experience as
a business major there. Doug decided to
start at Lamar, planning to transfer to UT
later. “I went and never left,” Doug
Marchand said. “We had to do our work,
but we also played hard. Looking back on it
now, it was a really good time. I feel good
about my training in marketing and
sales. College in general gives people
a chance to mature. It gives them a
chance to determine what it is they
really want to do. I think it did that
for me. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
It was a great time. I have lifetime
friends that I’ve kept as a result
of meeting them at Lamar.”
Marchand’s fond memories of
his time at Lamar include many golf
games at Tyrrell Park, sometimes during
park hours and sometimes after
dark. He still enjoys golf and tries to
squeeze in a round on Saturdays.
During the week, he stays busy
trying to constantly improve the operations
of the ports he oversees and anticipate what
changes might be coming next in an industry
that he has seen move from clipboards
used to track inventory to automation at
every stage of the process. More improvements
in technology, cargo handling and
safety are just a few of the challenges that he
believes lie ahead for the port industry.
Port managers also have the challenge
of determining how to pay for expensive
improvements that are constantly required. A
single new ship-to-shore crane to move the
20-foot containers standard in the industry
costs more than $9 million, and Marchand
has 23 of them on a single 1,200-acre terminal.
Balancing all those interests while
remaining at the forefront of the industry is
at the heart of what Marchand does.
“There’s always something more
you can do to streamline things,” he said.
“I challenge our information technology
people to stay three to four projects ahead
of our competition. While they’re catching
up, we’re putting another three to four
on the books.”
