https://columbia-group.com/about-us/

The Early Years

The Columbia Group of Companies was founded in 1990 with its successful all-water container barge service, Columbia Coastal Transport. The company began with one barge and one service operating between New York and Boston. Twenty eight years later, the company is recognized as the premier container barge feeder operator in the U.S., and the greenest and most efficient mode of container transportation available today.

Diversification into Landside Port Services

In 2002, in an effort to diversify the business, Columbia Group acquired the operating assets of Palmer Industries, Inc. and renamed the company, Columbia Container Services (CCS). As a result of the acquisition, CCS became a well-established provider of off-dock container/trailer storage, handling, trucking and repairs in the Port of New York/New Jersey. CCS also runs a first-class off-dock terminal for Maher Terminals at the Elizabeth Marine Terminal in the Port of New York and New Jersey. These well managed facilities lessen port congestion, create faster equipment turn-around times, and increase port productivity by removing non-essential equipment from the terminal.

As demand for the trucking of empty containers grew, Columbia Group established Columbia Intermodal (CI), the trucking and chassis pool management arm of the business. In Port Newark, Columbia Intermodal operates a fleet of trucks for container and chassis repositioning for other services as needed. In the Port of Boston, CI manages their off-site chassis pool.

New Ownership and Direction

In September of 2008, an ownership team led by Bruce Fenimore, President and CEO, acquired all three Columbia Group companies. His key objectives are to successfully position the company to meet the rapidly changing demands of the shipping industry, by providing quality performance in all services, to successfully meet the expected cargo volume increases on the U.S. east and gulf coasts.

Opening of the Bayonne Chassis Depot

Capitalizing on the industry momentum to relocate chassis from marine terminal property to just off terminal depots Columbia opened the Bayonne Chassis Depot in Bayonne, NJ which services GCT Bayonne marine terminal.  Opened in 2015, this facility is an exclusive chassis depot for TRAC Intermodal, the largest marine chassis provider in the country, providing inspection, storage and maintenance and repair of marine chassis. 

Container on Barge Investment

Anticipating the need to service the influx of cargo due to the increase vessel sizes and the potential inability for some ports to handle the larger vessels, in 2016, Columbia partnered to build the Columbia Freedom, a 900 TEU barge, built for container on barge feeder services.  The addition of the Columbia Freedom helped to upgrade the overall fleet and positioned Columbia to capitalize on the changes in cargo flow to the market.

Opening the Elizabeth Chassis Depot and Positioned for Future Growth

In the summer 2018, after successfully opening the 31-acre Elizabeth Chassis Depot (ECD), the largest location of pool chassis in the Port of New York and New Jersey, repositioning the current multi-user 14-acre depot facility as CCS Depot, relocating the Maher Terminals off-dock empty terminal to its new location at Polaris Street and opening up a state-of-the-art chassis maintenance and repair shop and office space within a 92,000 sq. ft. building, Bruce Fenimore  became the sole owner of Columbia Group and its three operating companies Columbia Container Services, Columbia Coastal Transport and Columbia Intermodal.    Under his direction as CEO and Owner, Columbia is laying the groundwork to continue to be the leading service provider to terminal operators, port authorities,  steamship lines, intermodal equipment providers and leasing companies.