Shipping & Handling

Growing up in Hardeeville, S.C., Lisa Tapley Wheldon (’90) always remembers a statement from her father about attending college. “Dad didn’t want me to be far away from him, and my mother attended Georgia Southern, so I followed in her footsteps,” she said.

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Today, the director of national sales for the Jacksonville Port Authority (JAXPORT) has a global perspective that extends far beyond her southern roots. She is responsible for new cargo business development in major regional markets, and her transportation industry experience is helping cement Jacksonville’s role as the Southeastern U.S. hub for international trade.

Wheldon earned her Bachelor of Business Administration degree in marketing from the University with two areas of emphasis: sales and sales management, and transportation and logistics. In 2002, she received a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Phoenix’s Jacksonville campus.

“I have been working in this industry for 20 years, and it is not anything that was planned – it just happened, I believe, because of these two emphasis areas in my major,” said Wheldon.

Wheldon’s extensive background in trucking and logistics began when she landed her first job as an office manager for Lanport Trucking in Savannah, which seemed a comfortable fit. “At the time, I had a lot of family in Savannah working around the ports. It was an entry-level job, and I was able to learn the ins-and-outs of the trucking industry,” she related.

Shortly thereafter, the company moved Wheldon to Atlanta, promoting her to trucking service sales.

In 1994, Wheldon began working for SeaLand in the customer service division, which at the time, was the largest steamship line in the world. Subsequently, she acquired 14 years of intermodal rail experience with CSX Intermodal and Florida East Coast Railway.

In Wheldon’s current position, her focus is on freight forwarders, cargo owners, custom brokers and other trade partners to sell the port and its extensive facilities, which encompass three terminals and 1,100 acres. These individual terminals include warehouse facilities for both dry and refrigerated products that are transported both by interstate and railway.

“In the past year, we exceeded 826,500 TEU (twenty-foot equivalent units), a record for us, with most of our global trade being with Puerto Rico, the Caribbean, South America and Asia. JAXPORT is the second busiest vehicle-handling port in the nation,” she said.

During the past couple of years, JAXPORT has added 22 direct port calls to 13 other countries, and more than 100 indirect connections to countries such as Belgium, China, Germany, England, France and Singapore.

Although Wheldon’s career requires traveling almost as much as the containers that come into JAXPORT, she hasn’t forgotten her small-town roots, and her father’s words about staying close to home. She, her husband Mark and 4-year-old daughter Emily enjoy returning to the slower pace of Georgia to visit extended family. “We love to take a quick weekend getaway trip to my dad’s farm in Reidsville,” she said.

–Mary Beth Spence