Memphis - Capital of the Real World

cWe live in a virtual era. Virtual malls, virtual bookstores, virtual cafes, whole companies that are nothing but bits and bytes, business models built on intangible assets and ethereal Web presences.

Welcome to Memphis, Tennessee, capital of the real world.

Memphis is the opposite of virtual. It's where all the stuff is kept - the Apple PowerBooks, the Nike sneakers, the HP LaserJet toner cartridges, the Mickey Mouse plush toys - before it's shipped to you. Over the past decade, because of geography and Federal Express, Memphis has become a mecca for people who transport things, a city built on infrastructure and logistics - a city on the move.

At the airport, one of the first signs you see says, "Memphis - America's Distribution Center." Unlike most civic boasts, that's an understatement: Memphis is the distribution center for the entire continent - and sets the standard for the entire world. Memphis International Airport is the world's busiest cargo airport. For each of the last six years, it handled more cargo than JFK, LAX, Tokyo's Narita, Amsterdam, or Frankfurt.

Memphis is home to 195 truck terminals - so many that every intersection on the city's south side looks like a stretch on the interstate, complete with a must-stop truck stop. Here, geography drives economics: A truck leaving Memphis is within an overnight drive of 75% of the nation's population.

Memphis contains yards for each of the nation's top four railroads. It's the end point of a 7,000-mile product pipeline that starts in Asian factories, where goods are packed into huge containers, and passes through the West Coast, where the containers are transferred directly onto Memphis-bound trains. After clearing customs in Memphis, the containers are dropped onto truck trailers and hauled the last few miles to a Disney Store distribution center, a Nike distribution center, a Sears distribution center.

Memphis can accommodate all comers: Within a six-mile radius of the airport, 130 million square feet of warehouse space - the equivalent of 130 major suburban malls - lies waiting for new tenants who want to make the move to Memphis.

Keep It Moving

At Williams-Sonoma's national catalog-sales fulfillment center, a box that's sealed and about to be shipped gets one final check. Riding on a racetrack-shaped conveyor, it passes across a scale built into the conveyor belt. As it hits the scale, a ruby-red laser scans the bar code on top of it. In a flash, a computer looks up the package's file in the main Williams- Sonoma database and compares its actual weight with the predicted weight that the computer had calculated the day before, when the order came in from a woman in Winnetka, Illinois. If the weights are within tolerance - that is, if the box appears likely to contain what the woman ordered - the computer tells the conveyor belt which exit ramp to kick the package down. The box then glides onto the right FedEx truck, docked one story below.

Almost as an afterthought, the computer lists the package on the truck's manifest and builds a file for Williams-Sonoma's customer-service department, which can now tell the woman in Winnetka that FedEx will soon have the package at her door.

But here's the real story: The package never actually stops on that built-in scale. In Memphis, the goal is to keep things moving - and on this conveyor belt, the boxes fly by at the rate of 3,600 packages an hour. In other words, the computer scans, weighs, cross-checks, verifies, lists, and dispatches an average of one package per second.

Steel Wheels

Freight trains ready to unload in Memphis sometimes have to park on a bridge spanning the Mississippi River. They are so long - a mile and a half or more - that sometimes the diesel locomotives idle in Tennessee while the freight cars sit in Arkansas.

More than half the cargo coming through the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad yard in Memphis is from overseas. The trains that arrive there several times a day - each car tracked by computer as it steel-wheels across the continent - are "de-ramped" with a sure-handed combination of strength and delicacy. Four giant forklifts, each capable of lifting 35 tons in a single pull, grab each container and settle it onto a truck chassis.

And truck drivers line up to wait for the trains. If the BNSF forklifts - which cost $1 million apiece, with tires costing $6,000 each - have to take your box off a train car, set it on the ground, and pick it up again when your truck finally arrives, the railroad charges you a second-lift charge of $50. After five days, the company starts charging $50 a day for every box that sits in its yard. Time is money: Memphis is not a town that tolerates very much waiting.