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Tennessee: A Logistics Powerhouse

Chances are, many of the products you use daily have moved through the Volunteer State.

By Kevin Litwin on November 22, 2023

FedEx World Hub
Mark Katzman/FedEx

With some of the nation’s best-maintained interstates and highways, world-class airports, and water and rail networks, Tennessee is a distribution and logistics leader. In fact, Business Facilities has ranked Tennessee No. 1 for Best Infrastructure in the Southeast. 

Transportation Network in Tennessee

The Volunteer State is strategically positioned within a day’s drive of 76% of major U.S. markets and is home to 13,800 distribution-related companies that employ nearly 231,000 workers. Major companies maintaining large distribution operations in the state include Academy Sports + Outdoors, Amazon, AutoZone, FedEx, Lowe’s, Macy’s, New Balance, Nike, REI, Under Armour and Walmart. 

The state’s logistics arsenal also includes 70 shovel-ready industrial development sites, including the 3,600-acre BlueOval City campus, (formerly known as the Memphis Regional Megasite) in the town of Stanton in Haywood County. 

Get Moving in Tennessee

Besides good roads (including eight interstates), other statewide distribution advantages are six Class I railroads, six commercial airports and a waterway system that features the Mississippi, Tennessee and Cumberland rivers.

BlueOval City is a mega-campus where Ford Motor Co. and SK On are constructing a $5.6 billion assembly plant to manufacture electric Ford F-150 Lightning pickup trucks as well as the batteries for the electric trucks. The plant will be operational in 2025, employing nearly 6,000 workers. Stanton is 50 miles northeast of Memphis, and Ford anticipates hiring employees who live in West Tennessee communities spanning from the Mississippi River to the Tennessee River. 

“Many advanced manufacturers want to locate in the western portion of Tennessee because of the excellent logistics and distribution prowess we have in place,” says Gwyn Fisher, Greater Memphis Chamber chief economic development officer. “There is a fantastic diversity of manufacturers in this region that are using our many modes of transportation to help them be successful.” 

Also in the region is the FedEx World Hub, which covers 880 acres and is the largest sorting facility in the world, handling between 1.3 million and 1.5 million packages every night over 42 miles of conveyor belts. FedEx World Hub helps to make Memphis International Airport the second-busiest cargo airport in the world in 2022, behind only Hong Kong. 

“Many of the impressive logistics numbers in Tennessee are driven by the Greater Memphis area, where supply chain and logistics companies contributed $19 billion to our gross regional product in 2022,” Fisher says. “Memphis is a city with the four R’s – river, rail, road and runway – and 20% of our workforce is dedicated to supply chain and logistics.”

Center of the Southeast

Chattanooga is also a hub of innovation for the distribution and logistics industry. Inc. Magazine recently named 13 companies in the Greater Chattanooga region that are among the nation’s fastest-growing firms, and eight of those companies are involved with logistics.

Greater Chattanooga is situated in an ideal location at the center of the Southeast, and its sophisticated transportation network includes access to major interstate corridors, Class I freight rail services, river barge shipping and air assets. Because of those transportation advantages, Chattanooga has earned a nickname as “The Silicon Valley of Freight.”

Major logistics companies in Chattanooga include Arrive Logistics, Covenant, Kenco and U.S. Xpress as well as FreightWaves, whose software data technology gives customers key insights into real-time freight-moving markets. Also in Chattanooga is Dynamo Ventures, a venture capital firm that backs startup logistics companies.

Supply Chain Management Summer Program at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Jay Huron

Excelling at Logistics

Tennessee’s logistics and distribution industry also benefits from a supply of skilled talent turned out by its higher education institutions. For example, U.S. News & World Report ranks the University of Tennessee’s supply chain management program No. 3 among U.S. universities.

“It might be surprising to many people that the No. 1 major for students enrolled at the University of Tennessee is supply chain management,” says Thomas Goldsby, co-director of the Global Supply Chain Institute located on the UT-Knoxville campus. “We have nearly 1,500 students majoring in supply chain at the undergraduate level, and another 500 grad students are also studying supply chain.”

Goldsby says supply chain grads at UT get placed into a variety of careers with top distribution and logistics companies such as Caterpillar, ExxonMobil, IBM, La-Z-Boy and Nissan. Key positions can include transportation engineers, transportation analysts, software specialists, supply chain managers, operations directors and outsourcing specialists.

“A degree in supply chain management gives our students the skills they need to work in many business areas and industries throughout the world,” Goldsby says.

Pilot training program in Tennessee
Cumberland County School System

Aviation Training in Tennessee

A handful of high schools in the Volunteer State are now offering aviation training to help students become licensed pilots.

That includes the Collierville Schools district, where a $2 million Innovative High School Models grant was awarded by the Tennessee Department of Education. Collierville Schools is working with the nearby University of Memphis through a dual enrollment program that allows high school students to work toward earning their private pilot license.

That is also the case in Crossville within the Cumberland County School District, where an aviation training program is open to any students attending Cumberland County High School or Stone Memorial High School. Students can earn their private pilot’s license before graduation, and the program is free.

Cumberland County High and Stone Memorial High students can learn to fly as well as take courses on aviation mechanics and drone piloting. The training takes about five months, and 25 total students from the two schools were enrolled in the inaugural program during the 2022-23 school year.

In fact, Cumberland County School District officials say some students enjoyed the experience so much that they are attending Middle Tennessee State University, whose Aerospace Department is well known for training students to become pilots as well as work in airport maintenance, dispatch and air traffic control. More than 1,000 students are enrolled in the program, and the university even has a partnership with Delta.

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