Cost savings · June 22, 2026
Five levers that move the number — without cutting corners on service.
Ocean freight is mostly out of your hands. What happens after the box hits the Ports of Seattle or Tacoma is where importers actually win or lose money. Most of the waste isn't in the rate — it's in the gaps: a container sitting past its free time, a half-full box trucked inland, a handoff between three vendors who each add a fee. Close those gaps and the landed cost drops. Here's where to look.
The cheapest charge is the one that never starts. Demurrage (box stuck at the terminal) and per-diem (box out but not returned) are pure waste, and both come down to timing. A dispatch team that tracks every container's Last Free Day and pulls before it — and prepulls to a yard when you're not ready — keeps these off the invoice entirely.
A 40-foot ocean container holds less usable freight than a 53-foot domestic trailer. Trucking that ocean box deep inland means paying to move air. Transloading near the port — devanning the container and restacking onto a domestic trailer — fits more freight per mile and sends the empty straight back. Take a parts distributor like PartStop: rather than running individual ocean containers to the door, we transload at Kent and move full domestic loads onward, cutting both the linehaul and the per-diem.
Every handoff is a margin someone bills you for — and a place freight sits waiting. When the same team runs the drayage, the transload and the outbound delivery, there's no second carrier markup and no idle dwell between steps. One invoice, one point of accountability.
Sometimes the warehouse isn't ready for the freight — and forcing delivery just creates detention or a redelivery fee. Short-term storage is cheaper than either. We hold freight at our Kent hub or with our partner Long Road Warehouse until you're ready, so the container clears on time and the goods ship on your schedule, not the terminal's.
Half of all accessorials trace back to bad information. An accurate appointment window lets us schedule a tight pull, send the right chassis, and skip prepull, chassis splits and detention. The more we know early, the less the move costs.
Demurrage and per-diem — both are timing-driven and entirely avoidable with a dispatch team that tracks Last Free Day and pulls before it.
For inland moves, usually — you ship full 53-foot domestic loads instead of paying to truck a partially full ocean container, and you return the box fast to stop per-diem.
It removes the markup and the dwell that come with every vendor handoff. One team running drayage, transload, storage and delivery means no second-carrier fee and no freight sitting idle between steps.