Drayage · June 22, 2026
When volume spikes at the Ports of Seattle and Tacoma, the shippers who planned ahead barely notice. Here's how to be one of them.
Every peak season the same thing happens at the Northwest Seaport Alliance: volume climbs, appointments tighten, chassis get scarce, and drayage that ran smoothly in spring suddenly takes days longer. The cost shows up as demurrage, detention and missed delivery windows. None of it is inevitable — it's a planning problem, and the planning has to happen before the rush, not during it.
Three things bottleneck first: terminal appointments (slots fill, and the wrong slot means a wasted trip), chassis (shared pools run thin, forcing chassis splits), and warehouse space (if there's nowhere to put the freight, the box can't clear). When all three hit at once, a one-day move becomes a week.
The fix is to reserve the whole chain ahead of the season, not call for a truck when the box lands. That means setting up dedicated or recurring lanes so capacity is committed to you, locking in chassis strategy for your container types, and lining up storage before you need it. We stage and hold freight at our Kent yard or with our partner Long Road Warehouse so a full warehouse never strands a container at the terminal.
When appointments are scarce, prepulling the container to a yard the moment it's available — instead of waiting for the perfect delivery slot — takes the box off the terminal clock and off the congestion. A small prepull fee beats days of demurrage every time.
Because we run drayage, transload and storage in-house, peak season is a scheduling exercise for us, not a scramble — and your freight keeps moving while everyone else waits at the gate.
Before the volume arrives — set up dedicated or recurring lanes and storage ahead of the season so capacity is committed to you rather than fought over at the gate.
Terminal appointments fill, chassis pools run thin (causing splits), and warehouse space tightens — together they turn quick moves into multi-day delays.
It gets the container off the terminal and off the demurrage clock as soon as it's available, instead of waiting for a scarce delivery appointment.
Dedicated and recurring lanes commit capacity to your freight ahead of the season — the closest thing to a guarantee in a congested market.