When intermodal beats trucking.
Intermodal — rail in the middle, road on both ends — wins on lanes longer than about 800 miles when the cargo isn't time-critical. Cost per mile drops substantially against over-the-road. Fuel surcharges drop. Driver capacity is irrelevant. The trade is time: intermodal adds 2–3 days vs. OTR because terminals have appointments, chassis pools have constraints, and rail scheduling isn't flexible.
For cost-sensitive freight on long lanes — coast-to-coast retail, durable goods, imported containers moving inland from the ports — the math works.
Drayage is its own operation.
Drayage is short-haul trucking between a port (or rail terminal) and a first destination — usually a warehouse, transload facility, or final delivery point. Sounds simple. It isn't. Drayage runs on terminal appointments that need booking days ahead, chassis pools with limited equipment, demurrage clocks that start the moment a container hits the ground, and per-diem charges that compound if the container sits at a customer location too long. Mishandling any of these turns a $300 drayage move into a $2,500 invoice.
We work named drayage carriers at each major US port, with chassis access and terminal appointment systems linked into our dispatch. The dray gets quoted with the rail in a single line item.
Rail in the middle.
The big intermodal corridors — BNSF, Union Pacific, Norfolk Southern, CSX — run containers across the country on tightly-scheduled trains. We book through IMC (Intermodal Marketing Company) partners and work directly with the railroads for high-volume customer accounts. Reefer intermodal is supported on specific corridors with cold-chain capability.
US ports we drayage.
Frequently asked.
When does intermodal beat over-the-road trucking?
On long lanes — 800 miles or more — and on cargo that isn't time-critical, rail in the middle of the move is cheaper per mile than OTR. Drayage on both ends adds time, but for cost-sensitive containers shipping coast-to-coast or near-coast, the savings are real.
What is drayage?
Drayage is the short-haul trucking that moves a container from a port or rail terminal to its first destination — typically a warehouse, transload facility, or final delivery point. It's a specialized operation: chassis pools, terminal appointments, demurrage windows all matter.
Do you handle reefer intermodal?
Yes. Temperature-controlled containers move on intermodal rail with continuous reefer-fuel checks at staging points. The same temperature SLAs apply — we coordinate the carriers and rail terminals that handle cold-chain intermodal reliably.
How fast is intermodal vs OTR trucking?
On a 1,500-mile coast-to-coast lane, OTR with a team driver runs 2–3 days. Intermodal on the same lane runs 5–7 days — the rail leg is fast, but the dray on both sides and the terminal staging add days. The trade-off is cost, not speed.