Project Cargo by Day, Teaching by Night

By Luke King

UTC Overseas’ Marco Poisler has built a career spanning global project logistics, academia and industry leadership. We take a closer look at the experiences and ideas shaping his view of the industry’s future.

From Issue 3, 2026 of Breakbulk Magazine

(6-minute read)

There’s precious little white space on Marco Poisler’s calendar. As chief operating officer of Global Energy and Capital Projects at UTC Overseas, he is on the road every other week, tracking projects that range from Gulf Coast rail moves to mining in South America.

As if that wasn’t enough, he also teaches transportation economics and project logistics as an adjunct professor at the University of Houston, recently earned a doctorate researching maritime technology dependency, and is a member of Breakbulk’s Future Thinkers program, helping chart an industry roadmap to 2045.

Ask him how he fits it all in and the answer comes quickly. “It’s passion, right? So you find the time,” Poisler said. “You do what you love, then it’s easy.”

From the Piers of Jersey City

Poisler’s path into logistics began close to the water. Born and raised in Jersey City, New Jersey, across the river from Manhattan, he grew up in what he calls “a blue-collar port town.” His father ran a trucking company delivering paper into New York’s Javits Center, and Poisler’s own introduction to the industry came through an internship, then a job, at the World Trade Center.

His family background reflects the industry’s international character. “Both my parents were born in Brazil. My dad’s side is German; my mom’s side is Ukrainian. They met in New York,” Poisler said. He grew up spending Saturdays at a Ukrainian school in Jersey City learning Cyrillic script and still has his kindergarten certificate written in Ukrainian. At Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service he studied Portuguese and spent a junior year abroad at the law school of the University of São Paulo. “If I spend a couple of weeks in Brazil, I get very close to native fluency,” he said. He also speaks Spanish.

Once he landed a job, Poisler enrolled in courses at the World Trade Institute at One World Trade Center, covering chartering, cargo insurance and Incoterms. “There were adjunct professors there, individuals who were traveling around the world and telling me how deals were done,” he said.

Poisler joined UTC Overseas in 1998, and now sits on the company’s global executive management team and board of directors, working out of UTC’s headquarters in Houston, where he has lived for more than 20 years. UTC’s roots stretch back almost a century, but its modern identity dates to 1989, when Brian Posthumus, a South African, took ownership and expanded the project division worldwide. Today the company operates in around 100 countries through roughly 50 offices and employs about 600 people worldwide.

“We have the advantage of being privately held,” Poisler said, contrasting UTC with larger, publicly traded forwarders in the market. Privately held companies, in his view, “have a long-term vision,” and he credits that structure with UTC’s ability to retain talent through industry downturns.

That hands-on culture is part of what has kept Poisler at UTC for nearly three decades. “I love the people, the grit of the job,” he said. “You’re not just on a laptop. Tomorrow I could be headed to Guyana to discharge two vessels.”

He points to Posthumus’s own work ethic as evidence of the company culture. “He’s in every day,” Poisler said. “Brian actually still goes to vessel loadings, to the Antonov loadings, puts on a hard hat. It’s uncommon to have ownership that understands what is happening in the field. It’s really what makes UTC unique.”

Betting on AI, Cautiously

When we met a year ago, Poisler was careful with his words on artificial intelligence. “I’m not going gaga over AI and saying, oh, this is all great,” he said at the time. “I’m actually quite conservative, and I’ve raised the flag about cybersecurity risks that this might bring.” Twelve months and one patent later, that caution has not disappeared, but it has been joined by something else: proof of concept.

Poisler’s research life and his day job converged most visibly this year around rail clearance technology. UTC began developing an AI algorithm to predict whether oversized cargo could clear rail routes back in 2024, filing a U.S. patent that November and receiving it in May 2025. In May 2026, the Port of New Orleans and the New Orleans Public Belt Railroad announced they had contracted UTC’s technology, branded TEID-RDC, to help shippers determine in advance whether equipment could move through the rail network, and by which route.

Underpinning the tool is a “digital twin” of the New Orleans rail network, essentially a live digital replica that tracks clearance information, bridge ratings and track geometry in real time, built on the Palantir Foundry platform. “We selected Palantir because they do quite a bit of government work,” Poisler said. “U.S. railroads are a national security concern, and to have a secure platform was definitely a consideration.” UTC has recently recruited Robert Sutton, a former BNSF Logistics executive, as AI program manager to help commercialize the technology.

“What’s exciting is that a number of railroads now want to adopt this to compete with trucking as a mode of transportation,” Poisler said. The rollout has outpaced UTC’s own projections: “We had a three to five-year business plan, but I can tell you, we’re about a year ahead on the rollout.”

Even so, Poisler remains skeptical about the application of AI in maritime. “The jury is still out about how useful it is to a project carrier, especially when you’re dealing with crew.” Rail and ports, he believes, offer a faster, safer proving ground for the technology.

UTC’s presence in Louisiana runs deeper than the New Orleans deal alone, through a joint venture called UTC Transoceanic, with Louisiana-based Transoceanic, founded by maritime executive Greg Rusovich. “Greg is the son of the founder of the original Transoceanic, which was sold to Agility years ago,” Poisler explained, but Rusovich kept the brand and built a new company under it. “Greg still has an amazing energy level and has been very active in civic work, working with the government of Louisiana, even more active after Hurricane Katrina,” Poisler said.

The tie-up fits a philosophy UTC applies globally: “Serve locally and be a global company with global standards,” rather than fly in expatriate staff to manage projects remotely. With roughly US$175 billion in capital project announcements in Louisiana, UTC is “looking to hire in Louisiana, train in Louisiana and manage projects from Louisiana.”

Widening the Map

UTC’s expansion has not stopped at Louisiana. The company opened a Buenos Aires office earlier this year to serve Argentina’s lithium and mining sectors, and Poisler pointed to a strong Mexico office that handled what he called the biggest power project in that country’s history. UTC’s partners and regional offices were due to meet at the end of August to review strategy across South America, which Poisler highlights as increasingly important for critical minerals as well as energy.

Asia is drawing similar attention. UTC has operated in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan for years and recently opened an office in Thailand, alongside a new global battery energy storage systems (BESS) group based in Singapore. “Asia is definitely a region that’s been a beneficiary in some shape of the tariffs situation,” Poisler said. “For us, being so strong in the United States, it’s just a natural extension.”

UTC’s regional expansion mirrors the growth of the Breakbulk portfolio, with the new Breakbulk Asia event launching this year. “We will absolutely be there,” Poisler said. “I will be doing the Breakbulk AI workshop there, as well. The model we’ve had is a mix of academics with business use cases, and that has turned out to be quite a success in Europe, Americas and the Middle East.”

Cargo Meets the Classroom

It’s a blend Poisler has lived firsthand, even though his own academic career began almost by accident. “I sort of fell into that role,” he said of becoming an adjunct professor of transportation economics and project logistics at the University of Houston. He credits a call from Margaret Kidd, who had helped build the course, after the previous instructor passed away. Poisler, who completed his master’s degree at SUNY Maritime in 2003, saw an opportunity. “This might be a chance for me to give back,” he said.

He recently earned a doctorate through the university’s Bauer College of Business, successfully defending a dissertation titled “The Autonomous Vessel Gap: What Crane Breakdowns Reveal About Maritime Readiness,” and serves as an industry faculty member of Bauer’s Human-Centered AI Institute. His research has real-world roots.

“I witnessed a discharging in South America, where the vessel crane had a digital sensor failure, and we lost three days,” he said, describing a shipment he was overseeing where the fault lay with the vessel. The episode crystallized the gap he wanted to study: Standard carrier vetting checks a vessel owner’s financial and safety record, but rarely accounts for the reliability of onboard technology or how confident a crew is operating it. He presented his findings at the International Maritime Economists conference in Norway.

Poisler also writes and records segments for a university radio show turned podcast hosted by Dr. John Lienhard, a 94-year-old engineering professor he calls “an absolute legend.” The format is exacting: Every segment must run precisely three minutes and 18 seconds, a discipline meant to force clarity. Poisler’s first submission, adapted from his SUNY Maritime thesis on heavy-lift ships, took nine drafts before Lienhard was satisfied. He has since produced an episode on specialized rail cars.

Poisler expects that classroom instinct to matter more, not less, across the industry. “Finding talent in this market right now is basically robbing Peter to pay Paul,” he said, a shorthand for an industry he sees drawing on the same limited pool of people, rather than growing it — an issue he expects to be a point of discussion at this year’s Breakbulk Americas.

Away from work and the lecture hall, Poisler is a keen hiker, traveler and reader, and a museumgoer whenever downtime allows. Both of his sons are Eagle Scouts, and he serves on the board of the Houston Maritime Center, which first drew him in through its scouting programs after he arrived in the city.

That love of travel found its fullest expression on a family trip to Europe. “We had a great trip to Italy as a gift for my oldest son’s graduation,” he said. “We started in Rome, we got to see the Pope, which was exciting. We drove up to Pisa, went to Monte Rosa, where my wife’s grandparents were from.” It is, in miniature, the instinct that runs through his career: Wherever the task takes him, Poisler tends to dig in and master his brief.

Marco Poisler will be leading an AI workshop at Breakbulk Americas 2026 in Houston. AI in Maritime & Logistics will take place on Monday, Sept. 21 from 9:00am - 12:00pm. Book your space.

Top photo: Poisler in Rotterdam on the eve of Breakbulk Europe 2026. Credit: Richard Theemling

Second: Poisler leads an AI in maritime and logistics workshop at Breakbulk Europe 2026. Credit: Richard Theemling

Third: A love of travel has taken Marco all over the world, including Mozambique. Credit: Marco Poisler