What is drayage?
Drayage is short-distance trucking that moves a container between a port, rail yard or terminal and a nearby warehouse. The distance is small but the work is dense with waiting and appointment rules.
Drayage is the first or last road leg of freight that travels most of its distance by ship or rail. A typical move is a container from a port terminal to a warehouse twenty miles inland.
It runs on appointment systems, chassis availability and terminal hours rather than on open road time. A drayage day is measured in turns completed, not miles driven.
What it means on a dispatch desk
Drayage pays per move rather than per mile, which makes mileage-based economics useless for judging it. The figures that decide whether a drayage lane is worth working are turns per day and how much of the driver's clock the terminal consumes. A port that averages three hours of queueing can pay well per move and still be the worst work available.
Related terms
- IntermodalIntermodal freight travels in the same container across more than one mode of transport, typically rail for the long distance and trucks for the short legs at each end, without the cargo being unloaded between them.
- Dwell timeDwell time is how long a truck, trailer or container sits idle at a facility waiting to be handled. It is the underlying measure that detention charges are calculated from.
- DetentionDetention is money owed to a carrier when a shipper or receiver holds the truck beyond the free time agreed for loading or unloading, usually two hours. It is billed by the hour after that window closes.
- Cost per mileCost per mile is a carrier's total operating cost divided by total miles driven, including empty ones. It is the number that decides whether a given rate is profitable.
Knowing the term is the easy half
Knowing which carriers are worth calling this morning is the hard half.
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