Export container drayage that hits the cut, every time.
Charleston export drayage is a deadlines game — earliest receiving date, vessel cut-off, and the SOLAS VGM submission window. Cate Freight schedules pickups against the line's actual cut, not a guess, and submits VGM through the right channel before the chassis leaves your yard. It's the export half of the same Charleston drayage operation that checks releases on every import.
Export drayage timing — what actually matters
Export bookings have three time windows that decide whether your container makes the vessel or rolls to the next one:
- Earliest Receiving Date (ERD). The earliest the terminal will accept your loaded export. Drop too early and you get turned away. Drop after ERD and the container can sit safely waiting on the vessel.
- Cargo cut-off. The hard deadline for the loaded container at the gate.
- VGM cut-off. The deadline for submitting the SOLAS Verified Gross Mass — sometimes the same as the cargo cut, sometimes earlier.
We schedule pickup of an empty, loading at your facility, and delivery to terminal against all three windows — never just the cargo cut. That's the difference between making the vessel and watching it sail.
SOLAS VGM coordination
Verified Gross Mass is a SOLAS regulatory requirement. The carrier submits the certified weight before the cut-off so the line can stow the vessel. Cate Freight can submit VGM via the line's portal or via INTTRA, and we'll capture the certified scale weight at pickup if you don't have a certified scale on site.
Empty pickup & pre-load staging
Export drays usually start with an empty pickup at the terminal or chassis depot. If you need the empty staged at your dock before loading day — for instance because you're loading at 6 AM and the gate doesn't open early enough — we'll pre-pull the empty and drop it overnight. Same idea as an import pre-pull, just upstream.
Where Charleston export drays start — and which terminal they end at
Loaded exports return to whichever SCPA terminal the booking cut to — Wando Welch (USCHA) in Mount Pleasant, North Charleston (USNCH), or Hugh Leatherman (USCHL). The empty usually comes from the same terminal or the line's chassis-pool depot. The loading happens wherever your product is: a plant, an export warehouse, a transload dock. The lanes we run for export loading follow the same corridors as our import work, in reverse:
- Tri-county loaders. Plants and export warehouses in Charleston, Berkeley, and Dorchester counties — North Charleston, Hanahan, Goose Creek, Ladson, Summerville, Moncks Corner, and the Camp Hall build-out near Ridgeville. Short drays, often same-day empty-in / loaded-out.
- I-26 Midlands. Columbia, Cayce, and Newberry loaders running loaded boxes back down I-26 to a Charleston gate.
- I-85 Upstate. Greenville, Spartanburg, and Anderson manufacturing, roughly 210 highway miles from the SCPA gates. ERD-aware scheduling matters most on these longer lanes — an Upstate box has to be timed against the cut, not just dispatched.
- I-95 corridor. Florence, Hartsville, and the agricultural and forest-product shippers north and south of the I-26/I-95 interchange.
Wherever the loader sits, the return leg ends at a Charleston gate. See the Charleston drayage coverage area for the full lane map, or send the booking and origin ZIP and we'll quote the round trip.
What we need to quote an export drayage move
- Booking number and steamship line
- Container size, type, and any specialty (reefer set point, OW, OOG)
- Pickup origin (where loading happens)
- Return terminal at SCPA
- ERD, cargo cut, VGM cut
- Commodity, weight, hazmat (with UN# if applicable)
Common questions