Biggest ship ever to sail into S.F. Bay arrives Thursday

For more information on how to check out the ship yourself, go to the Port of Oakland’s website.

Making the port call was the decision of Jacques R. Saadé, Group Chairman and CEO of the vessel’s owner, Marseilles, France, headquartered CMA CGM.

“For the first time in the US History, an 18,000 container-capacity vessel called at a US port. As a pioneer group, this unprecedented call shows CMA CGM’s strong faith in long-term growth potential of the US economy and our commitment to increasing our US market share”.

The almost quarter-mile-long megaship named the Benjamin Franklin set sail from China earlier this month with a stop in Los Angeles after Christmas. The containers now stack seven layers high, but in 2016, the port will make its cranes even taller, allowing workers to stack 10 containers on top of each other.

The CMA CGM Benjamin Franklin was scheduled to leave the Port of Los Angeles today, arriving in the Port of Oakland for its second USA call on Thursday, December 31 after going under the Golden Gate Bridge at approximately 9:30 a.m. Pacific Time that day.

During this call, more than 4,500 containers were to be carried by train to their final destination.

The Franklin’s USA visit is considered a trial run.

The ship will stay at Berth 24 at the Ports America Outer Harbor Terminal until Sunday afternoon or Monday morning, port officials said. “As the average size of ships grows and more cargo is squeezed onto fewer weekly services, terminals have to prepare for much greater peaks in container activity”, the report said. Industrial Info is tracking transportation projects worth a combined $855 million at the Port of Los Angeles and the nearby Port of Long Beach, with much of the investment earmarked for upgrading and improving their cargo-handling facilities. Ships like this are actually common on routes between Asia and Europe.

French megaship, called the CMA CGM Ben Franklin, docked around dawn Saturday.