Break-of-Bulk Point

“Break-of-bulk point” is a term from the geography of economic development that refers to a location where cargo transported in bulk must be broken into smaller units so the cargo may be moved further and generally distributed over a larger space. Usually the mode of transportation changes as well; for example, from ship to railroad, or from rail to trucking. This results in a concentration of economic development at the location, as storage, processing and transportation facilities all cluster near the point of delivery. In essence, every port city is a break-of-bulk point, because many commodities delivered to such locations are transported in bulk and often must be processed or refined. An example is crude petroleum, which is delivered to ports utilizing enormous vessels called supertankers. Some of the largest supertankers may carry up to 2 million barrels of oil, nearly the entire daily demand of some smaller industrialized countries. The vast volume of oil carried by these ships must be off-loaded and stored in large tanks, before it is moved by pipeline to refineries where it is made into heating oil, gasoline, and other petroleum products.

Physical barriers also can serve as break of bulk points. This was the case in the early urban development of the eastern United States, when streams were used to penetrate the interior of the region. As larger ships moved upstream, they typically encountered rapids or waterfalls at a point where the streambed crossed an abrupt change in elevation. This point where the elevation changed is known as the fall line, indicating the imaginary line in the eastern United States separating the Gulf Atlantic Coastal plain from the Piedmont, a region of rolling hills and rugged terrain. At the fall line, a change in the mode of transportation was required—in this case, moving goods from a larger ship to smaller barges or canoes to send the cargo further upstream. Because a change in the means of transport was needed that required shifting products from vessels of larger bulk to smaller carriers, storage and processing facilities were also typically required at the point of the fall line along streams. This led to the agglomeration of economic activities at the break of bulk location, and the subsequent development of urban centers, as labor and capital were drawn to these points. Break-of-bulk points, especially port cities, tend to develop into industrial centers since there is always an additional cost involved when transferring to a different means of transport. This is especially true in the case of bulk commodities like petroleum, iron ore, coal, etc. Thus, break-of-bulk locations frequently develop into processing centers for raw materials, as it is more cost effective to refine the materials into higher-value products at that location rather than transport them further in unprocessed form. Finally, break-of-bulk points may be established by changes in political space, such as at a border crossing, where legal limits on the weight of bulky cargos force division into smaller parcels.