If you import by ocean or rail, you have heard the word drayage on every invoice. It simply means the short truck move that takes your container from the terminal to its destination: your warehouse, a cross-dock, or your customer's door. Short distance, big consequences, because when drayage stalls, everything behind it stalls too.
When your container is offloaded at a rail terminal in the GTA, the clock starts. A drayage carrier like KDM sends a tractor with a chassis, the frame the container rides on, picks up the box, and delivers it. After unloading, the empty goes back to the terminal or depot. That is the whole move, and every step depends on two things: chassis availability and dispatch that actually answers.
Most drayage delays are not truck shortages, they are chassis shortages. A 40-foot box needs a 40-foot chassis, and during peak season everyone wants them at once. KDM keeps more than fifty chassis in 20, 40 and 53-foot sizes on hand, with access to more when volumes spike, which is why our containers rarely wait.
Drayage is usually a small line on your landed cost, until it goes wrong. A missed pickup means storage charges at the terminal. A slow unload means detention on the chassis. A carrier who does not update you means your customer calls you before you can call them. Cheap drayage that misses windows is the most expensive freight you will ever buy.
KDM has moved FCL for freight forwarders like Traffic Tech International and Gillespie-Munro since 2011, with terminal pickups across the GTA, transloading at our own 200,000 sq ft warehouse, and partner drayage in Halifax, Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver.
KDM dispatch answers the phone and quotes same day. 289-723-2174.
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