Freight to and from the United States

Choosing a coast is a routing decision, not a preference

Containerised cargo enters the United States through the Pacific coast, the Atlantic coast or the Gulf. The three ranges are not interchangeable. The range a shipment uses fixes the length, cost and complexity of everything that happens after discharge, so it is chosen against the final destination rather than against the port.

Cargo bound for the western states, and cargo destined for inland markets that are well served by intermodal rail, is normally routed to a Pacific gateway. Cargo bound for the eastern seaboard and the south-east can often stay on the water all the way to an Atlantic port, which shortens the domestic leg at the cost of a longer voyage. Gulf entry serves the south-central interior and the chemical, resin and project traffic concentrated around it.

• Pacific entry shortens the sea leg and lengthens the land leg.
• Atlantic entry does the reverse and is usually simpler inland.
• Gulf entry suits the south-central interior and heavy or chemical trades.
• The right answer changes when the destination changes, so it is decided per programme rather than settled once.

The domestic leg is where a plan holds or fails

The distance between a US seaport and a delivery point is often large enough that the inland move is a project in its own right. It takes one of two common shapes. The ocean container can be railed inland on an intermodal service and drayed from a rail ramp, or it can be transloaded near the port — unpacked from the ocean container and reloaded into domestic road equipment.

Transloading exists because ocean containers and domestic road trailers are different equipment with different internal dimensions. Cargo that fills an ocean container efficiently does not necessarily fill a domestic trailer efficiently, and consolidating the contents of several ocean containers into fewer domestic loads can change the economics of the whole inland move. It also adds a facility, a handling step and a damage risk, so it is a decision to be tested, not a default.

Both shapes depend on things that sit well outside the ocean booking: drayage capacity around the gateway, chassis availability, terminal appointment systems and the receiving site's own delivery windows. A schedule built only around the vessel is not a schedule.

Exports behave nothing like imports

US export cargo tends to be denser than its import cargo — agricultural products, resins, scrap, machinery, timber and paper products. Dense cargo reaches a weight limit long before it runs out of space, which moves the conversation from cube to payload and puts road weight regulation at the centre of the origin leg.

Road weight limits and permitted axle configurations are set at state level and vary by route and by structure. A load that is legal on one corridor is not automatically legal on another, so on heavy cargo the routing may have to be established before the loading plan is fixed rather than after it.

Equipment availability for exports is also inherited from the import flow. Where a region imports heavy volume and exports little, empty containers have to be repositioned, and an export booking picks up that imbalance whether or not it is visible on the quotation.

Air freight, and the legs on either side of it

Air freight to and from the United States runs through a limited number of large cargo gateways, on a mixture of belly capacity under passenger services and dedicated freighter capacity on the main international routes. It earns its rate on cargo whose absence is expensive: parts that stop a production line, launch stock, medical goods, high-value electronics.

It is rarely the whole journey. An airport is a point on the map, not a destination, so a domestic road leg follows almost every air import and precedes almost every air export. Shippers who compare air with ocean on airport-to-airport terms alone are the ones most often surprised by the door-to-door result.

Formalities are handled by parties licensed in the United States

US import and export formalities are a discipline of their own. Advance electronic information about arriving ocean cargo is required, entry is filed by a party authorised to file it, and obligations differ by commodity and by the agency with jurisdiction over it — food, agricultural goods, medical devices, vehicles and wood packaging all attract additional oversight.

LogisticID is not a United States customs broker and holds no United States licence, registration or filing authority for that work. Declarations are made by the importer of record, by the exporter, or by a licensed broker they appoint. What is required varies by shipment, commodity, jurisdiction and trade lane, and should be confirmed with the relevant authority or with a licensed broker before the goods move.