The ships arriving from Japan, Europe and Mexico will unload thousands of Toyota vehicles each time one docks in Jacksonville, where Southeast Toyota Distributors built a new $170 million processing facility with financial help from the state and JaxPort.
Inside the cavernous building on the Blount Island terminal, the sedans and SUVs and pickup trucks go through a final round of processing for interior lighting, exterior illumination, running boards, hitches, skid plates, Toyota emblem overlays, scratch-resistant clear film on hoods and mirrors, wheel lug nut torquing, battery checks, fluid top-offs and customized accessories.
“We do all the health checks of the vehicle — the diagnostics — like you’re going to the doctor to get a physical,” said Ray Natour, vice president of vehicle processing and logistics for Southeast Toyota Distributors.
Once the vehicles have cleared the entire checklist, they’re shipped to 178 Toyota dealerships in five states across the Southeast.
“When that vehicle comes off that truck, it’s ready to be sold to the consumer,” Natour said.
Southeast Toyota showed off the new facility at an April 22 grand opening ceremony attended by Gov. Ron DeSantis along with federal, state and local leaders.
“Hats off to everybody,” DeSantis said. “This is an amazing facility.”
Jacksonville is the largest vehicle processing port in Florida and one of the biggest on the East Coast. Port tenants moved about 506,000 vehicles in the 2025 fiscal year. Southeast Toyota’s facility at JaxPort accounts for roughly one-fourth of that business.
Southeast got a foothold in 1969 in Jacksonville at the Talleyrand terminal. As it outgrew that facility, Southeast Toyota worked with the state and JaxPort to build the new 380,000 square foot operation on 88 acres at Blount Island.
The state Department of Transportation put up $22.9 million for the new facilty, JaxPort chipped in $6.6 million and Southeast Toyota Distributors paid $140.5 million.
“They stuck their flag in the ground 50-plus years ago and they’re showing what Jacksonville means to them,” JaxPort CEO Eric Green said.
Southeast Toyota, which is a subsidiary of JM Family Enterprises based in Deerfield Beach, also operates vehicle processing centers on Pritchard Road in Jacksonville and in Commerce, Ga. The two Jacksonville processing centers employ about 750 full-time employees and Southeast Toyota also contracts with outside companies for about another 400 workers supporting the centers here.
One of the biggest differences for the employees who began shifting last October to the new facility is it has what’s called “conditioned air” that will keep the temperature under 80 degrees even when summer weather is scorching outside. Huge fans mounted on the ceilings further keep air circulating.
At Southeast Toyota’s former facility at Talleyrand, the air was hotter inside than outside in the Florida heat.
Southeast Toyota President Brent Sergot said the company processed about 390,000 vehicles in 2025 at all three of its processing centers for its busiest year ever. That included 120,000 vehicles at the JaxPort facility
The Blount Island facility will add rail service in spring 2027, a connection the Talleyrand facility didn’t have. Once that happens, the new facility will have capacity for processing up to 160,000 vehicles a year.
“It will be the only facility we have to receive vehicles by rail, by sea and by truck,” Sergot said. “And it will become our single-largest processing facility.”
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: How Southeast Toyota’s new facility drives growth at JaxPort
Reporting by David Bauerlein, Jacksonville Florida Times-Union / Florida Times-Union
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
