Drayage TMS: what container and intermodal carriers need from their software

Why drayage breaks a truckload TMS

A truckload TMS is built around a load: a shipper, a pickup, a delivery, a truck and a driver, then an invoice. That shape works for most over-the-road freight. Drayage, the short-haul move of containers between ports, rail ramps, warehouses and yards, does not fit it well, for four reasons.

• The container outlives the trip. An import box may be pulled from the terminal one day, dropped in your yard, delivered two days later, then returned empty after the customer unloads it. That is one shipment and many moves, often with different drivers.
• Someone else's clock is running. The terminal, the shipping line and the chassis provider each give free time, and charges start the day it ends. The deadline that matters is not the delivery appointment; it is the last free day.
• Permission comes first. A driver sent to a terminal for a container on a customs or line hold wastes a turn and may be charged a dry run. Before dispatch you need to know the box is released.
• The equipment is borrowed. The container and usually the chassis belong to an intermodal equipment provider, interchanged to you under a written agreement (49 CFR 390.5T names the UIIA as the standard one). That brings receipts, inspection duties under 49 CFR 390.42 and charges after free time.

So the questions a drayage dispatcher asks every morning are different: which boxes are released, which hit their last free day tomorrow, which empties must go back today, and which charges are we about to absorb.

The container as the unit of work

A drayage TMS should hold a record for each container with the fields that drive its moves and costs:

The container should also have a stage anyone can read at a glance: awaiting release, ready, pre-pulled, at yard, at customer, empty ready, returned, or for exports, gated in. If your stages live in a spreadsheet column that someone updates when they remember, the board is wrong by mid-morning.

Release checks before dispatch

An import container can be held for several independent reasons: customs has not released it, the shipping line has not released it (often for unpaid freight or missing documents), or the terminal has a hold of its own. Your carrier may also need to be cleared for access at that terminal, and the chassis or container may need an equipment inspection. A drayage TMS should keep each of these as its own check, with a status such as not verified, clear, on hold or not required, and refuse to send a driver for a pickup until the checks are clear.

Many terminals and lines publish this status online. Some TMS products pull it automatically; many carriers still check by hand. Either way, the important part is that the status is recorded on the container with a time and a reference, so the dispatcher, the driver and the customer see the same answer.

Deadlines in the terminal's time zone

A last free day is a date in the terminal's local time, not yours. A carrier in Chicago working containers at a West Coast port, or a dispatcher covering both an East Coast port and a Midwest rail ramp, can be off by hours if the software counts days in the office's time zone. A drayage TMS should store the terminal's time zone with each container and count every deadline in it.

Deadlines also need to be visible in advance, not discovered on the day. A useful board shows each container's next deadline with a clear state: scheduled, due soon, overdue. The last free day article goes through how storage free time is counted and what to do when a deadline cannot be met.

Multi-move containers

Each container is a small project. Typical moves:

• Import pickup from the terminal or ramp.
• Pre-pull to your yard before the last free day when the customer cannot receive yet.
• Yard transfer between your own locations.
• Customer delivery, live unload or drop.
• Empty pickup from the customer after unloading.
• Empty return to the terminal or a depot the line names.
• Street turn of the empty onto an export booking, when the line approves (see street turns).
• Export delivery of the loaded export to the terminal before cutoff.
• Chassis pickup and chassis return when the chassis comes from or goes to a different place (see intermodal chassis).

Each move needs a driver and a time and should show up on the normal dispatch board. Completing a move should move the container to its next stage, so nobody has to remember to update it.

Daily charges, accessorials and supplier disputes

Container charges are where drayage margins disappear. Storage at the terminal, per diem on the container, chassis rental, yard storage, pre-pulls, chassis splits, dry runs, waiting time and overweight or reefer handling all show up after the move, often weeks later. A drayage TMS should handle them in three steps:

1. Calculate. A daily charge needs a start and end date, the number of free days, and any excluded dates (weekends or holidays the provider does not count). It should hold the customer rate and the supplier cost separately, so you know both what to bill and what you will pay.
2. Bill. The charge should become an accessorial on the customer's invoice for that load, before the invoice goes out, not on a separate sheet nobody reconciles.
3. Dispute. When the provider's invoice is wrong, you need a record of the dispute with its status, its deadline and the evidence. Under the UIIA, the provider has sixty days from the equipment's return to invoice per diem and similar charges, and the motor carrier has thirty days to respond in writing with its evidence (sections E.6.c and E.6.f). Missing that window is expensive.

The demurrage, detention and per diem guide explains the difference between the charges.

Demo checklist for a drayage TMS

Bring one real import and one real export to the demo, and ask the vendor to show, on screen:

• Creating the container with its line, booking, terminal and every deadline, and where the terminal's time zone is set.
• How customs, line and terminal holds are recorded, and whether a driver can be dispatched to a held box.
• Whether release status comes from a live feed or is entered by your team, and which terminals a feed covers.
• Adding a pre-pull, a delivery and an empty return, linked to drivers on the dispatch board.
• A storage charge with free days and an excluded holiday, with the customer rate and supplier cost, posted to the invoice.
• A disputed per diem invoice: where the deadline and evidence are kept.
• The history of every change on the container, and who made it.

Our general TMS demo questions cover the rest of the platform: invoicing, settlements and integrations.

TruckerPro's Intermodal and Drayage workspace

TruckerPro has an Intermodal and Drayage workspace on the Elite plan and up, switched on in company Settings. Each container is a job, with import or export direction, shipping line, ocean booking, pickup last free day, empty-return last free day, earliest return date, export cutoff, empty return location and reference, and seal number. The terminal field suggests US and Canadian ports and rail ramps with their time zones, and free text is still allowed.

Containers move through stages: Awaiting release, Ready to collect, Pre-pulled, At yard, At customer, Empty ready, Container returned, Export gated in and Closed. Your team records five readiness checks on each container (customs release, shipping-line release, terminal release, terminal access and equipment inspection), each as Not verified, Verified clear, On hold or Not required. Pickup, pre-pull, export delivery and street-turn moves are blocked until those checks are clear or not required.

The pickup last free day, the empty-return last free day and the export cutoff are counted in the terminal's own time zone, flagged as due when two days or less remain and overdue after, on the drayage board and on the container page.

Moves cover import pickup, pre-pull, customer delivery, yard transfer, empty pickup, empty return, export delivery, chassis pickup, chassis return and street turn, and a move can be linked to a dispatch leg. An empty return or street turn cannot be completed until the empty return location and reference are entered.

Charges cover terminal or rail storage, container detention or per diem, chassis rental, yard storage, pre-pull, chassis split or flip, dry run, empty return, waiting time, overweight, reefer or genset, and other services. Each is fixed, per calendar day or per weekday, with free days and excluded dates, and carries a customer rate and a supplier cost. A daily charge that overlaps an existing one for the same period is refused. A draft charge is posted to the load as an accessorial on the customer invoice, as long as the load has not been invoiced, or waived. A charge can be linked to a supplier bill in payables, and a dispute with the supplier is tracked with its status (open, submitted or resolved), a dispute deadline and an evidence note. Billing follows the load's currency, in US or Canadian dollars, and every change is logged as an event on the container.

What it does not do: TruckerPro has no live connection to terminal, port, rail or shipping-line systems. It does not fetch release status or last free days automatically, and it does not book terminal appointments. Your team checks the terminal or line and records the result; the workspace then holds pickup moves until the recorded checks are clear and flags the deadlines you entered.