As he drives around the Port of Baltimore, Mark Schmidt points out giant cranes used to unload cargo from ships.

“The cranes are the coolest part, I think,” said Schmidt.

Schmidt is president of Ports America Chesapeake, which runs Baltimore’s container ship terminal. He actually started his career at the port over 30 years ago repairing container ship cranes, and he still enjoys the challenge of moving cargo around.

“It’s a puzzle, and it’s sophisticated and very high speed and tech-y,” he said.

Those cranes are a prominent part of the Port of Baltimore, much of which was inaccessible for over 10 weeks after the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge exactly one year ago. The bridge fell after it was hit by a container ship, the Dali. With the collapse of the bridge, six construction workers died, a major piece of infrastructure was destroyed, and the shipping channel to the port of Baltimore was blocked for more than 10 weeks. The more than 300-year-old port is known for being a hub for cargo such as cars, construction and farming equipment, and coal.

At Ports America Chesapeake, Schmidt said the company moved 35% fewer containers in 2024 compared to the year before. This affected revenue significantly. 

However, it could have been a lot worse. Early estimates of how long it would take to clear the shipping channel ranged from six months to a year. Instead, it took 74 days.

“It could have been two or three times as bad as what we encountered,” said Schmidt. “It really, really came back quickly.”

Ship traffic at the port of Baltimore is back to about 90% of where it was prior to the bridge collapse, according to Richard Scher of the Maryland Port Administration. 

That’s being felt at storage facilities around the port. At Trans American Trucking and Warehouse’s Baltimore location near the port, workers lashed a giant wooden box of cargo to a flat metal rack before it was moved to a ship.  Last spring, they were doing a lot less of this work, said warehouse supervisor Timothy Summers.

“We barely had any trucks coming in, barely had any containers,” said Summers. “I thought with business slowing down, they might start laying people off, but good thing they didn’t.” 

One of Trans American’s owners, Craig McGraw, said things are pretty much back to normal now. He had been worried about losing customers in the long term. 

“The concern with us was that they were going to leave, go to another port and then not come back. But once they realized that it wasn’t going to be the six months, it was going to be shorter — Baltimore is a great port, so they decided to stay with it from the looks of it,” said McGraw.

Baltimore is known for its expertise in handling cars and other big rolling machinery. It’s also the farthest inland port on the East Coast, which means items shipped here have less distance to cover on land.

Tinglong Dai, who studies operations management at Johns Hopkins, said there’s another factor that helped in the recovery: Some companies likely moved up shipments in anticipation of a longshoremen’s strike and tariffs. 

“There was a lot of rush, a lot of activity,” said Dai. 

Overall, the port handled about 46 million tons of cargo last year — the second-best year on record. Dai said whether that pace continues will depend a lot on economic factors outside of the port’s control.

That includes both tariffs and how much consumers still want to buy all the things shipped in those containers.