Drayage is the short-distance movement of ocean containers — typically from a port or rail terminal to a nearby warehouse. It is a small part of the total journey by distance, but a critical link: delays or mistakes in drayage cascade through your entire supply chain and can trigger expensive fees.

What drayage covers

When your container arrives at the Port of Seattle or Tacoma, it needs to move to a warehouse for unloading. That port-to-door move is drayage. It includes coordinating with the terminal, chassis, and appointment windows to get your container out on time.

Why timing is everything

Ports charge demurrage when a container sits too long at the terminal and per-diem when the container is held too long after pickup. These fees add up fast. Good drayage is about pulling containers before the last free day and returning empties on schedule.

What to look for in a drayage provider

  • Proximity to the port and terminal relationships
  • Real-time container and appointment tracking
  • Chassis availability and flexible capacity
  • Seamless handoff to transloading or warehousing

Drayage plus warehousing

The biggest efficiency comes from combining drayage with warehousing under one roof. When the same partner pulls your container and unloads it, there are fewer handoffs, fewer delays, and one point of accountability.

Long Road Warehouse sits minutes from the Seattle-Tacoma port complex, making us an ideal drayage-and-warehouse partner — see the full set of warehousing services. Request a quote to keep your containers moving.

Who pays drayage, and where it sits on the invoice

On an FOB shipment the importer owns the freight from the origin port onward, which means the drayage is yours to arrange even when the forwarder quotes it. On DDP it is folded into the forwarder's price and you never see the line. Neither arrangement changes the cost — it changes whether you can see it, and a drayage charge you cannot see is one you cannot compare.

A normal port-to-warehouse move is priced as a base rate for the lane plus the accessorials that the day produced. The base rate is the easy part. What separates a predictable invoice from a surprising one is the second half of the list below.

The accessorials that actually decide the bill

  • Chassis — charged by the day, and the day starts when the chassis leaves the pool, not when your container does. A prepull that sits over a weekend is three chassis days.
  • Prepull — taking the box off the terminal before the last free day and holding it on a yard. It costs a move and some storage, and it is almost always cheaper than demurrage.
  • Congestion and dual transactions — whether a driver can bring an empty back in on the same trip that takes a loaded one out. When the terminal allows it the lane costs less; when it does not, you are paying for two trips.
  • Waiting time — the driver sitting in a queue at the gate or at your dock, billed per hour after a free window. Most of the disputes we see on drayage invoices are here.
  • Overweight and tri-axle — an ocean container loaded to its ocean limit is frequently over the legal US road limit. It then needs a tri-axle chassis, a permitted route, or the freight split — see transloading.
  • Hazmat and reefer — different equipment, different driver endorsement, different rate.

Demurrage and per-diem are two different clocks

Demurrage is the terminal charging you for occupying their yard after the free days end. Per-diem is the ocean carrier charging you for keeping their container after the free days end. They run on different counters, they start on different events, and it is entirely possible to be paying both on the same box at the same time.

The free time is usually a handful of days and it begins on availability, not on discharge. That distinction costs importers real money: a vessel discharged on Friday may not make the container available until Monday, and a carrier that has not watched for it loses the weekend. Our demurrage calculator runs the arithmetic, and the last-free-day guide explains what triggers each clock.

The practical defence is a prepull. Move the box off the terminal before the free time expires and the demurrage exposure becomes a storage line you control. The empty then goes back on a schedule you set rather than the one the terminal happens to have appointments for.

Seattle and Tacoma: what makes this gateway its own problem

The Northwest Seaport Alliance runs both harbours as one gateway, but the terminals do not behave as one. In Seattle the container traffic sits at T-18, T-30 and T-46; in Tacoma at Husky, Washington United and PCT. Each runs its own appointment system, its own gate hours and its own rules about empty returns, and each can independently stop taking a particular steamship line's empties on a given day.

That is why a carrier's terminal coverage matters more here than its truck count. A drayman who works one terminal will tell you the box has to wait until that terminal has capacity. One that works all of them pulls it the day it is available. See Port of Seattle drayage and Port of Tacoma drayage for the terminal-by-terminal detail.

Live unload, drop and hook, or straight to a warehouse

Three arrangements, and the right one depends on how fast your dock can work.

  • Live unload — the driver waits while you strip the container. Cheapest if your dock is genuinely ready; expensive the moment it is not, because waiting time is billed.
  • Drop and hook — the container is dropped at your dock and collected later. No waiting charges, but chassis days accrue and the carrier needs the equipment to spare.
  • Deliver to a 3PL — the box comes to our dock in Kent instead of yours. We strip it, the goods go on the rack, and the empty goes back the same day. There is no waiting time to bill because the dock and the truck are the same company.

Questions worth asking a drayage provider

  • Which terminals do you actually run to, and do you have current appointments at all of them?
  • Who is watching my last free day, and how will I be told when it is at risk?
  • What is your chassis arrangement, and who pays the chassis days on a prepull?
  • If the freight is overweight, do you have tri-axle equipment or do I need a transload?
  • What happens to the empty, and who is accountable for per-diem if it sits?

A provider who can answer all five in one phone call is the one you want. A provider who has to check with someone is a broker, and the person they are checking with is who you are actually hiring.