Bob Watters Quotations

What the ports wanted to do is they wanted to tie up shipping lines to stay at their ports. The ports really in a sense put the U.S. terminal operators, more of them, out of business, because they were targeting the shipping lines.

Since 9/11, (security) has taken on new dimensions that they didn't have before. There are many different layers of security in the process.

It is lower cost for us to buy our own cranes. The port charged us a tariff for using the cranes.

We realized it was light when we picked up the container. Customs checked the manifest (a cargo list) and found no detailed information in it.

We would be surprised if there were impacts to foreign commercial entities leasing terminals in the U.S. because of their successful track record.

It's a capital intensive business to get into and ... to actually have the leases, it's very difficult because the port authorities want to give the leases to shipping lines rather than terminal operators. We would have a lot more terminal leases if we could.

It's like we're used to flying out of a small airport while they've been using O'Hare or JFK.

None of the alternatives we are exploring would involve selling control of our U.S. operations to a company owned by a foreign government.

The frequency of their schedules -- how many times per week they call at a given port -- varies, which also makes cooperating useful.