Bridgestone Firestone North American Tire (Nashville, Tenn.) hosted an official groundbreaking yesterday for its new distribution center in Jacksonville, Fla.
Once complete, the 1 million-square-foot facility will be the largest Bridgestone Firestone DC in the country and will employ 250 people, according to the tire company.
With a throughput capacity of more than 1 million tires, the DC will supply tires and automotive parts to Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina.
The tire manufacturer added that the facility will ultimately supply the entire United States with imports from Latin America and the eastern half of the United States with tires from Japan and other Asian countries.
“Our primary motivation for selecting Jacksonville is its strategic location near the Port of Jacksonville, which is expanding and will give us the ability to provide overnight delivery service to more than 96 percent of our customers,” said Nelson Miller, vice president of logistics for Bridgestone.“This new distribution center is not designed to be simply a storage facility,” Miller added. “Rather, it will be a superhighway of inventory. Tires will move quickly through the warehouse to their final destination, typically staying at the facility less than four weeks.”Bridgestone said the new Jacksonville DC is the culmination of a modernization program that the company started more than 12 years ago.
