Trailer Bridge names Suter CEO
Ivy Barton Suter, who was a member of the first class of midshipmen to include women at Kings Point, is the new chief executive officer of Trailer Bridge.
Suter will head the Jones Act carrier, which offers a combined trucking and container-on-barge service between the mainland and Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.
Suter is also a former member of the board of Saltchuk Resources, the company that owns 90 percent of Trailer Bridge competitor Sea Star Line.
Ralph W. Heim, Trailer Bridge's interim CEO since December 2008, will remain as president and chief operating officer. Heim filled in after long-time CEO John McCown stepped down last December. McCown had been a close associate of containerization pioneer Malcom McLean for decades. McLean founded Trailer Bridge late in life after founding Sea-Land Service and running U.S. Lines in the 1980s.
Suter, 55, has more than 20 years of executive experience in a variety of industries, including marine, shipping and intermodal operations. Since 2006, she has served as a managing director at the consulting firm Alvarez & Marsal, where she advised companies in areas such as financial and operational due diligence, mergers and acquisitions and turnarounds.
Previously, she served as president of Service Solutions' Tools & Equipment N.A., a business owned by SPX Corp., in 2005-2006; and as president of the Gast Manufacturing, a unit of IDEX Corp., in 2001-2005. She has also worked for Allied-Signal (now Honeywell), General Electric, United Technologies' Pratt and Whitney division, and Navistar International Truck Co.
Suter is chairwoman of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy Alumni Foundation, where she earned an engineering degree in 1978.