Technology consulting for intermodal and drayage

Why drayage strains a standard TMS

Most trucking software was designed around a load: pick up here, deliver there. Drayage revolves around a container that comes off a vessel or a train, has holds and free time attached, rides on a chassis that belongs to someone else, and has to go back empty to a terminal that may not be the one it came from. That's a different data model, and many operations end up running the hard parts outside their system.

• Port and rail visibility. Vessel and rail ETAs, container availability, and customs, freight and line holds are checked on terminal websites one container at a time, then copied into the TMS, or not.
• Last free day and demurrage. Last free day is tracked on a spreadsheet or whiteboard. When it's missed, demurrage and storage charges land on the invoice, and the conversation about who pays starts after the fact.
• Per diem and equipment detention. Free days on the container start at outgate. Empties sit at the customer, street-turn opportunities are missed, and per diem invoices from steamship lines arrive weeks later with no easy way to match them to moves.
• Chassis. Pool, private and customer chassis each carry different costs and rules. Chassis days aren't tracked per move, so chassis cost isn't billed back accurately and split moves create extra charges nobody planned for.
• TIRs and interchange. Equipment interchange receipts record condition at gate-in and gate-out. If they aren't captured and stored against the move, damage and per diem disputes become your word against the terminal's.
• Appointments. Terminal appointment windows, customer delivery times and driver hours all have to line up, and dispatchers juggle them in separate screens.
• Accessorial billing. Pre-pull, yard storage, chassis split, overweight, triaxle, waiting time, dry run and flip charges are where drayage margin lives, and they're the charges most often missed.
• Driver pay. Per-move pay plus waiting time, with owner-operators and company drivers on different rules, makes settlements error-prone.

How Strong Tower practices apply to intermodal and drayage

Container lifecycle process design

Business Process Optimization maps the container from availability notice through pickup, delivery, empty return and billing. We define who watches last free day, when an empty is pushed for return or a street turn, how TIRs are captured, and what has to be true before the move bills.

Making the system fit drayage

Business Analysis documents what your system tracks today against what drayage requires: container and chassis numbers, holds, free time, appointments and per diem. Often the fields exist and simply aren't used. Where they don't, TMS Selection & Advisory gives you a vendor-neutral view of options.

Data feeds and EDI

ELD, EDI & Back-Office Integration covers the interfaces that remove manual lookups: container status and event data where your sources support it, EDI with customers and partners, imaging for TIRs and PODs, and accounting.

Exposure and profitability reporting

SQL Data Mining & Analytics shows per diem and demurrage exposure by customer, chassis cost per move, accessorial capture, and revenue per move and per driver hour. Intermodal reports have been part of our Reporting & Business Documents catalog from the beginning, including the containers-at-risk list your dispatchers check each morning.

What an engagement looks like

Every Strong Tower engagement follows the same arc: Analyze, Streamline, Deliver, Sustain (see How We Work). What changes by segment is where we look first and which numbers we put in front of you. For an intermodal or drayage operation, a typical engagement runs like this:

1. Discovery. We sit with dispatch, customer service, billing and settlements, and follow containers from availability through empty return. Then we review how the system handles containers, chassis, free time, appointments and accessorials.
2. Findings. A written assessment ranks issues by dollars and risk: demurrage and per diem paid, accessorials missed, chassis cost unbilled, hours spent on manual lookups.
3. Plan. Scope, owners and schedule, starting with the free-time and billing controls that pay back fastest.
4. Execute. Process changes, configuration, reports, interfaces and training, managed to plan.
5. Sustain. KPIs such as moves past last free day, per diem days per container, accessorial capture and street turns, tracked on a set cadence.

Most clients start with a fixed-scope Technology Assessment.

Signs it's time to bring in help

It's usually time to call when free-time charges or missed accessorials become too large to ignore. Common triggers:

• Demurrage and per diem invoices arrive regularly and are hard to match to moves.
• Last free day lives on a whiteboard or a spreadsheet that one dispatcher maintains.
• Chassis cost isn't billed back per move, or nobody knows what it is.
• TIRs are paper, or stored somewhere that can't be found when a damage claim arrives.
• Pre-pull, storage, chassis split and waiting time charges are performed but often missed on the invoice.

Each of these shows up directly on the bottom line, which makes drayage one of the fastest places for process and system changes to pay back.

Frequently asked questions