So just how many bananas get shipped through the 10th Avenue Marine Terminal? Port officials say that 615,000 metric tons of bananas are unloaded at the terminal.
That’s 1.3 billion pounds.
And with about three bananas in a pound, that’s 4 billion bananas.
That’s a lot of bananas.
Other figures that didn’t find their way into my story:
- The terminal directly employs about 860 people, according to port spokesman John Gilmore.
- The terminal was a conduit for 2.7 million metric tons of cargo in 2007. (That includes those 4 billion bananas.)
- About 95 percent of the cargo that comes through the terminal is imported.