Freight forwarding
Canada: two coasts, long rail, one dominant land border
Canadian freight is shaped by distance and by proximity to one very large neighbour. Which coast a shipment uses, and whether it crosses the land border, decide most of the plan.
- Trade region
- North America
- Customs
- Outside the EU customs territory
- Road freight
- Outside the road freight service
The coast is a choice about the inland leg
Pacific gateways serve trans-Pacific trade and feed the interior by rail. Atlantic gateways serve European and Mediterranean trade and feed the eastern population centres. The two are not substitutes: choosing the wrong one attaches a continental rail movement to a shipment that did not need it.
Because the population and industrial base are concentrated within a relatively narrow band, the useful question is not which port is nearest the origin but which port has the shorter, better-connected inland leg to the actual destination.
Rail is not an alternative here, it is the default
Inland Canadian distances are long enough that rail carries a large share of containerised movement between the ports and the interior, with road handling collection, delivery and the shorter regional legs.
That has a practical consequence for planning. An intermodal movement inherits terminal cut-offs and terminal opening patterns at both ends, and the road legs have to be arranged around them. A door-to-door plan that ignores the terminal is a plan with a gap in the middle.
North–south movement is a different problem from import and export
A large share of Canadian trade crosses the land border with the United States, and that traffic behaves like domestic road freight with a customs step rather than like international ocean freight.
Requirements at the land border vary by commodity and by the programmes a carrier participates in, and they change. The position for a specific movement should be confirmed with the relevant customs authority rather than assumed from a general description.
Gateways
How goods reach and leave this market.
- Pacific container terminals serving trans-Pacific trade, with rail into the interior
- Atlantic container terminals serving European and Mediterranean trade
- Inland intermodal terminals where containers transfer between rail and road
- Road crossings on the United States border, carrying a large share of total trade
- Air cargo through the major airports for time-critical and high-value consignments
Quoting
What shapes a quote here.
- Whether the movement is an import, an export, or a north–south land crossing, because those are three different operations and not variants of one
- Whether the goods will move on into or out of the United States afterwards, which changes the status they need on arrival
- Whether the consignee holds the registration an entry will be made against — a question to put to a customs agent rather than assume
- Whether the destination is served year-round or only for part of it, which can govern the delivery window more than the sea leg does
- Provincial permitting where the load is oversize or overweight, which is not uniform across a single routing
From market to movement
Define the two loading points, not only the country.
A country sets the trade context. A usable freight request still needs postcodes, cargo and dates.
European road freight