Terminal velocity.

In Rio de Janeiro a slum engulfs the railway leading into the port there, forcing trains to a crawl, even to a standstill. In Santos, Brazil's largest port and home to 28% of the country's total cargo volume, trucks carrying auto parts, soybeans and frozen orange juice all vie for space to unload, a fight that takes up time. An unprecedented boom in international and domestic trade has led to an explosion in the volume of cargo, swamping Brazil's port infrastructure. In the five years since 1999, the volume of cargo handled at the country's ports has increased by 50% on average and by far more at some ports and specific terminals. "Never before have Brazilian ports moved as much cargo," says Sergio Salomon, head of Abratec, Brazil's association of container-terminal operators. Unless bottlenecks and red tape are scrapped, industry leaders warn, the economy of Latin America's largest country is at risk.