It’s official.  Today is the day when any crane operator, truck driver, longshorman and many others must present their TWIC card to be allowed on Port property.  For those that haven’t been following this, a TWIC card is a government issued photo ID that also contains a biometric chip encoded with fingerprint information.  In order to obtain one, a complete background check is performed and the holder must pay a $132 every 5 years.

Most industry participants agree that the TWIC card program is a good one.  Ports have the potential to be a significant terrorist threat and it’s best to know who is on the property.  However, implementation of the program is not without its challenges.  When Savannah implemented the TWIC card program, they had to turn away 50-100 people the first day.  That’s pretty good considering how many truckers, employees etc are at the port on a daily basis.

It will be interesting to see if Virginia has learned from the Savannah implementation and how many people they have to turn away today.  Stay tuned…