ARTHUR R. SAVAGE
PRESIDENT, A.R. SAVAGE & SON, TAMPA
With 45 full-time employees, the companies A.R. Savage & Son, A.R. Savage & Son Advisory and Tampa Bay Ship Services provide ship agency logistics, compliance support and port calls management for clients’ ships and cargo, plus ship mooring, waste removal, hold cleaning and other services to ships while in port. Last year, the company received a substantial investment from the multinational company AGS Agunsa. Savage joined the company in 1984 and became president in 1997. He has served as president of many of the maritime industry associations in Tampa and served three terms on the Tampa General Foundation Board.
EDUCATION: Attended Hillsborough Community College and University of Tampa for two years.
FIRST JOB: From my earliest memories I was helping my parents when they entertained our customers in our home and on our boat for port tours to show them where their ships would load and discharge. I learned a lot about their business and their different cultures. My first paying job was mowing yards in the neighborhood.
SOMETHING SURPRISING: I grew up watching my grandfather, father and their peers contributing countless hours to improve their city, port and industries. The hours they volunteered as “sons of the city” to provide their experience and money, sincerely and selflessly was incredible. I admired their commitments and have tried to follow their positive examples. Also, through my love of history and our community I wrote a book on Tampa Bay’s waterfront history and development.
PASSION PROJECT: Protecting our port. We have seen our port contract, as many have, due to residential development around or on our deep-water channels that don’t need to be there. The closer residential gets to industrial, without a commercial buffer, the more it is threatened. In the past, we have been able to adjust and accommodate this, at very high costs, because we have the space to do it. We don’t any longer. We are constrained by space now and have nowhere else to go. Developers, and politicians that are committed to them, are a threat to our deep-water port that benefits us all. If we lose the high-paying port jobs, unemployment goes up, crime follows, then prices, as has been seen in so many former port cities like Baltimore, Manhattan, Brooklyn and many others.
SOMETHING SURPRISING: I have been married to my amazing wife Melly for 33 years. She convinced me to come back to Miami to take a job at Ryder. The second-best decision I made in my life. Professionally, outside of my colleagues at Ryder, many don’t know that in the 32 years I’ve been at Ryder, I’ve had 18 different jobs since joining the company in the IT department as business systems designer in 1993.
