Drayage is the short-distance trucking of an ocean shipping container. Almost always, it's the move that takes a container from a port marine terminal to a nearby destination — a warehouse, transload yard, intermodal rail ramp, or shipper's loading dock — or the move that takes the container back to the port. That's it.
Where the word comes from
"Drayage" is from the word "dray," a heavy cart used to haul goods in the era before motor trucks. When ports needed a word for the short-haul carting of containers between the docks and the city behind them, "drayage" already existed and stuck. It's still the term every steamship line, freight forwarder, customs broker, and shipper uses today.
What drayage is not
- It's not long-haul trucking. A 1,800-mile freight move from Los Angeles to New York is not drayage. Drayage is short by definition.
- It's not intermodal rail. Intermodal is when the container moves on a train; drayage is the truck legs at either end of an intermodal move.
- It's not the ocean leg. Drayage starts when the container hits the chassis at the port — never on the water.
The two main flavors
Import drayage
The container is unloaded from a vessel, released by customs and the steamship line, picked up by a drayage truck, and delivered to its inland destination. Empty container goes back to the line later.
Export drayage
The empty container is picked up at the port (or a depot), driven to the shipper's facility for loading, then driven back to the port and dropped at the terminal before the vessel's cut-off.
Why drayage matters more than people realize
Sea freight is dominated by economies of scale — gigantic ships moving thousands of containers at a time. Drayage is the opposite: a single tractor pulling a single chassis with a single container. It's the most expensive leg of the journey per mile, and it's the leg most likely to determine whether the whole shipment runs on time. The ocean carrier can't fix a missed delivery window. The drayage carrier can.
It's also where most accessorial costs accumulate. Demurrage, detention, chassis splits, fuel surcharges, overweight permits, hazmat charges — these all happen at the drayage layer. A sharp drayage carrier prevents most of them. A sloppy one creates them.
What "drayage" looks like in Charleston
At the Port of Charleston, drayage is the only mode that moves your container at all — Charleston is the only major East Coast port without on-dock or near-dock rail (the Navy Base Intermodal Facility is finally arriving in 2026). Every container in or out of Charleston is on a dray truck for at least the first or last 5–500 miles of its journey. That makes Charleston a more drayage-intensive port than Norfolk, Savannah, or New York — and makes the difference between a sharp drayman and a sloppy one painfully visible.
Cate Freight's role
We're a Charleston, SC drayage carrier. We pull from all three SCPA container terminals — Wando Welch, North Charleston, and Hugh Leatherman — and run drays into warehouses, transload yards, and consignees across South Carolina, Georgia, and the Carolinas. Read our Charleston drayage page for specifics on how the operation runs.