QUICK ANSWER Drayage is the short truck move, usually under 100 miles, that carries a shipping container between a port or rail ramp and a warehouse, yard, or railhead. It is priced per move, runs on special equipment and terminal credentials, and sits between two ticking clocks: terminal free time on one side and equipment free time on the other. Ocean freight crosses the Pacific in weeks; drayage decides whether the last 40 miles take a day or a week.
Importers meet drayage twice per container and notice it only when something goes wrong: a missed appointment, a chassis bill, a container stuck behind a terminal system nobody explained. This guide covers what drayage is, the six job types, who is allowed to pull your box, the weight limits, and what actually sits inside a drayage quote.
The truck move that opens and closes an import
Drayage moves a loaded or empty container over a short distance, most often between a marine terminal and a nearby warehouse or rail ramp. The container itself never opens in transit: the same sealed box that left Shanghai rolls onto a chassis at the terminal and arrives at your dock intact. The word survives from the dray, the low horse-drawn cart that worked ports before trucks, and the job description has barely changed: short, heavy, local.
What has changed is the stakes. A drayage move is the segment of an import where daily charges concentrate: miss your window and the container earns the terminal demurrage money, return the equipment late and it earns the carrier per-diem money. The truck leg costs hundreds; the clocks around it can cost thousands.
Where drayage sits in an intermodal move
A door-to-door import from Asia is three transport legs: origin trucking to the port of loading, the ocean crossing, and the US side move from terminal to door. Two of those three are drayage. Add rail to an inland city like Chicago or Dallas and the count grows: port to rail ramp, then rail, then ramp to warehouse. Every handoff between vessel, train, and warehouse is a drayage job, which is why intermodal shipping cannot exist without it and why one late dray leg cascades into the whole transit plan.
Six drayage jobs and when each one runs
Drayage types and what each covers
| Type | The move | When it shows up |
|---|---|---|
| Pier (port) drayage | Terminal to a nearby yard or staging warehouse | Short hop for staging or transload |
| Inter-carrier | Between two carriers' facilities, rail to rail or port to rail | Inland moves on two railroads |
| Intra-carrier | Between two facilities of the same carrier | Ramp-to-yard repositioning |
| Expedited | Priority move on a deadline | Restock emergencies, production stoppages |
| Shuttle | Terminal to an overflow yard and back | Congested ports, no appointment slots |
| Door-to-door | Direct terminal to final consignee | Most importer deliveries |
The shuttle row matters more than it looks. When a terminal runs out of appointments or your warehouse cannot receive, the container gets shuttled to a private yard, and that pre-pull is often the cheapest insurance in the whole move, a topic the cost section below returns to. From the transload dock, the onward leg runs as FTL or LTL depending on volume.
One container move, step by step
A standard port pickup, with the clocks that run
| Step | What happens | The clock |
|---|---|---|
| Container discharged | Box comes off the vessel, enters the terminal stack | Free time starts counting |
| Customs and carrier release | Entry clears, freight charges settled | Free time still counting |
| Appointment booked | Trucker gets a terminal slot | Slots can be days out at peak |
| Gate-out | Driver picks up the container on a chassis | Terminal clock stops; equipment clock starts |
| Delivery | Live unload at your dock, or drop and hook | Driver waiting time bills by the hour |
| Empty return | Chassis and container go back to the terminal | Per-diem stops when the box is in |
Two clocks run back to back. Terminal free time, typically 4 to 5 working days, ends at gate-out; equipment free time ends at empty return. The first clock's overage is demurrage, the second's is per-diem, and each has its own guide: demurrage at the terminal and the per-diem clock on equipment.
KEY TAKEAWAY Read a drayage delay as two separate bills, not one. A container that gates out late pays demurrage; a container that returns late pays per-diem; a badly run week pays both.
Who is allowed to pull your container
Not every trucker can collect a container, and this surprises importers who assume trucking is trucking. The carrier needs a UIIA interchange agreement, the industry's standard contract for using steamship lines' containers and chassis, before any terminal will release equipment to it. Port drivers carry TWIC credentials, the federal port-security card. And most major terminals run appointment systems with finite slots, so capacity is not how many trucks a carrier owns but how many appointments and credentialed drivers it can put against your port on a given morning.
Drayage weight limits nobody warns you about
The federal road limit is 80,000 pounds gross: truck, chassis, container, and cargo together. After the tractor and the intermodal equipment take their share, a standard 40-foot container has roughly 43,000 to 44,000 pounds of legal cargo weight. Load 47,000 pounds at the factory, which is legal at sea, and the box arrives needing a tri-axle chassis and overweight permits, at extra cost per move and fewer available trucks. Heavy commodities get planned around this before booking, not discovered at the port; it is one of the checks worth running when the packing list shows the gross weights.
What a drayage charge actually contains
A drayage quote is a base number plus a stack of situational charges, and comparing quotes means comparing the stack, not the headline.
Anatomy of a drayage invoice
| Line | What it covers | Typical shape |
|---|---|---|
| Base linehaul | The move itself, terminal to door | Flat per move, distance-banded |
| Fuel surcharge | Diesel cost pass-through | Percent of linehaul |
| Chassis rental | Daily fee for the frame under the box | $25 to $45 per day |
| Pre-pull | Pulling the box before free time ends, storing it | Flat fee plus yard storage per day |
| Driver wait time | Slow live unloads past the free hour or two | Hourly after free time |
| Congestion or peak fees | Terminal turn times at hard-hit ports | Per move, port-specific |
| Overweight, reefer, hazmat | Special equipment or handling | Per move add-ons |
The chassis line has its own economics, split fees and shortage dynamics included, covered in the chassis fees guide. Rates by port, and why the same move costs different money in Los Angeles and Savannah, live in drayage costs by port.
KEY TAKEAWAY A drayage quote without an accessorial list is not a quote; it is the first half of an invoice. Ask for the chassis, wait time, and pre-pull terms in writing before you compare anyone's base rate.
Drayage vs trucking, intermodal, and cartage
Against over-the-road trucking, drayage differs in equipment, credentials, and rhythm: containers on chassis instead of trailers, UIIA and TWIC instead of a straight carrier setup, and days shaped by terminal appointments instead of dispatch windows. Against intermodal, the relationship is part-to-whole: intermodal is the strategy of moving one container across ship, rail, and truck; drayage is the truck segment stitching those modes together. And cartage, the term drayage gets swapped with, classically means local delivery of loose LTL freight rather than sealed containers, though plenty of people use the words interchangeably and are understood.
How Platton runs drayage for importers
Platton runs drayage as part of the import file, not as a subcontracted afterthought, across a network of 42 US ports and rail ramps.
Same-day pickup as the default
93 percent of containers get picked up the same day they become available. That number is the difference between free time as a buffer and free time as a countdown.
Gate-out to dock in 36 hours
The average container goes from terminal gate to receiving dock in 36 hours, with 97.4 percent of deliveries on time. Both numbers come from running clearance and trucking as one sequence instead of two vendors pointing at each other.
Fees engineered out, not disputed after
Pre-pulls when appointments run out, empties returned inside free time, chassis days counted. The result averages $280 in avoided fees per container, saved before it becomes an invoice line rather than clawed back in a dispute afterward.
One owner from vessel to warehouse
The same team watching your customs clearance books the drayage appointment, so the container moves the day it releases. When the release slips, the appointment moves with it instead of burning a slot.
Get a drayage quote with the accessorials priced in
Common Questions About Drayage
What is a drayage charge?
Any line item for the short-haul container move: the base linehaul plus situational charges like chassis rental, pre-pull, driver wait time, and fuel. On event invoices, "drayage" means moving exhibit freight from the loading dock to the booth, same word, different industry. For imports, read the anatomy table above before comparing quotes.
What is another word for drayage?
Cartage and haulage are the near-synonyms, both older than the truck itself. In practice, cartage leans toward local delivery of loose LTL freight while drayage means sealed container work on a chassis, but the industry mixes the words freely and context does the disambiguation. Event logistics uses "drayage" too, for moving booth freight at trade shows.
What is the difference between drayage and intermodal?
Intermodal is the whole journey when one container moves across vessel, rail, and truck under one plan. Drayage is the truck portion of it: port to ramp, ramp to warehouse. There is no intermodal without drayage, but a drayage move on its own, terminal to warehouse, is not intermodal shipping.
How is drayage different from regular trucking?
Equipment and access. Drayage pulls sealed containers on chassis, requires a UIIA interchange agreement and TWIC-carded drivers, and lives by terminal appointment systems. An over-the-road carrier hauls trailers on the open highway with none of those constraints, which is why a great OTR carrier can be useless to you at a port.
How far can a drayage move go?
Most moves run under 100 miles, port or ramp to a nearby warehouse. Extended dray up to roughly 300 miles exists where the economics beat transloading, but past that range a transload into a road trailer usually wins; that break-even is covered in our transloading guide.
Do I book drayage separately from ocean freight?
You can, but the two only work well booked together. The dray carrier needs the release status, the terminal appointment, and the delivery window to line up with the vessel and the entry. When the ocean freight and the dray sit with one operator, the container moves on release day; when they sit with two, coordination is your job.
Related Trucking Guides
Drayage costs by port: what the same move costs across the major US gateways.
Chassis fees explained: the daily rental economics under every container.
Container detention and per-diem: the equipment clock that starts at gate-out.
Transloading explained: when moving cargo out of the container beats extended dray.
