At one time the Butterfield Overland Mail Trail was the only game in town. It was the main route through Southern Arizona and served as the only channel for goods and information to travel from the West Coast back east. It took roughly 25 days to get a letter from San Francisco to St. Louis.

My how things change. Today there are any number of options to get goods from here to there in Tucson – by road, rail or air. And you can do it in a matter of hours.

Tucson’s transportation and logistics sector is 150 companies strong and employs more than 3,700 people in logistics, transportation, and warehousing.

This region boasts a unique geography that is its greatest asset from a transportation perspective. It’s near the border of Mexico, as well as deep water ports there and in California. Within a 500-mile radius there is a market of 34 million people and within a 1,000 mile radius there are 55 million people.

Interstate 10 gives convenient access to Phoenix and Los Angeles, and east to El Paso. Tucson sits on a Union Pacific rail line and Tucson International Airport boasts one of the most diverse aeronautical bases in the nation. Not many cities have all of these advantages plus the opportunities they present. That’s why transportation/logistics is one of the four target industries in TREO’s economic development blue-print.

Target.com arrived in Tucson with