Container Transloading

There are several causes that may favor container transloading, which tends to take place in the vicinity of port terminals or inland (satellite) terminals:

• Consolidation. In many cases where this is a significant market for domestic containers and the domestic load unit is significantly larger than the maritime load unit, a consolidation of the shipments is often performed. For instance, in North America the largest domestic load unit is 53 foot, which represents the maximal legal size of a truck load on the highway. Thus, in distribution centers in the vicinity of several major port terminals the contents of three maritime containers are transferred into two domestic containers. This enables cost savings as shipment costs, including terminal costs, are established in terms of loads. A domestic rail terminals charges by the number of lifts, which means the costs are the same to handle a 40 foot or a 53 foot container. Under these circumstances, the transloading costs are compensated by savings on inland transport costs. Yet, transloading involves some risks such as damage and theft or additional delays to perform (about one day), which may not be suitable for several goods.
• Weight compliance. Simply involves shifting the contents of heavy containers into lighter loads such as domestic containers or twenty footers. This is particularly the case for the containerized movement of commodities. However, transloading heavy maritime containers into domestic containers is not a common practice.
• Palletizing. Very common for shipments of consumption goods. To gain shipment space in imbalanced container flows many containers are "floor loaded" and once arriving near consumption markets, the shipments are broken down and assembled into manageable pallets. This also gives the opportunity to adapt to local load units that involve different sizes, such as the difference between North American and European pallets. Doing such a task at the point of origin would be logistically complex.
• Demurrage. Containers are commonly rented for a specific time period and/or the leasing contract specifies that the maritime container cannot leave the vicinity of the port (or cannot spend more than a specific amount of time inland). Transloading it thus performed to insure that the leased container is handed back to the maritime shipping or the leasing company without additional charge. This tends to reduce the repositioning of empty containers over long distances and promotes a higher level of asset utilization.
• Equipment availability. This often takes place in conjunction with demurrage. Transloading enables a more efficient use of both container assets (international and domestic) and can facilitate international trade by freeing transport capacity. For instance, moving maritime containers over long distances in the North American transport system can be considered a suboptimal usage of transport equipment. Conversely, the global maritime shipping industry is mainly designed to handle 40 foot containers and cannot accommodate domestic containers. However, a large amount of transloading for inbound shipments may reduce the availability of maritime containers available for export at inland locations. This is a salient problem for the export of containerized commodities.
• Supply chain management. A transloading facility can act as a buffer within a supply chain, enabling shippers some room to synchronize the delivery of goods with the real time needs of their customers. This is particularly the case for long distance trade where a shipment can be in transit for several weeks while the demand conditions at the destination may have changed. Transloading thus offers an opportunity to delay the decision about routing freight to the final destination by using the facility as an opportunity to do last minute adjustments in terms of which shipments should go to which markets. More directly, transloading represents an opportunity to perform some added value activities (packaging, labeling, final assembly, etc.) before shipments arrive at final markets.

In many cases transloading requires specialized equipment and a facility where it can be performed.