Drayage is the short truck move that takes a container from a rail ramp (or a port) to a warehouse, and often takes the empty back. In Chicago that move can be five miles or fifty, depending on which public ramp the railroad used and where your dock sits. The steps, though, are the same. This essay walks through them without inventing wait times, queue lengths or chassis-shortage numbers.
1. Know which ramp, and the last free day
Chicago is not one terminal. A container arriving "in Chicago" may be at BNSF Logistics Park Chicago in Elwood, at Union Pacific Global IV in Joliet, at an in-town BNSF, CSX or Norfolk Southern ramp, at CN Harvey, or at CPKC Bensenville. Those places are in different cities, on different interstates. Our ramps guide names them.
Every container has a last free day: the date by which it needs to leave the terminal (and, later, the date by which the empty needs to come back) before the railroad or the steamship line starts charging demurrage or per diem. A useful booking starts with the container number, the ramp, the weight, the delivery address, and that last free day. If your dock cannot take the box in time, a pre-pull into a warehouse is often cheaper than letting demurrage run. We can talk through that; we do not publish a rate table for it here.
2. Chassis
A container cannot roll on its own. It leaves the ramp on a chassis, the wheeled frame the box sits on. Who provides that chassis on a given day depends on the railroad, the steamship line, and the equipment available at that terminal. Sometimes it is a motor-pool chassis at the ramp. Sometimes it is a chassis your trucker brings. The only honest general rule is to ask when you book, and to confirm on the morning of the pickup.
Freight Network Solution Company does not publish a chassis inventory or an ownership claim on this site. If you need to know how chassis will be handled on your move, your account representative will tell you for that load.
3. The out-gate and the drive
The driver checks in at the terminal gate, is assigned a box and a lane, and leaves with a ticket that shows what came out. Then the interstate choice is a Chicago-specific problem:
- Elwood and Joliet: I-55 and I-80, and the local roads into those parks.
- Cicero, Corwith, Willow Springs, Bedford Park: I-55, I-294, I-290, Cicero Avenue.
- South Side NS ramps and CSX 59th Street: I-94, I-57, and the south-side arterials.
- CN Harvey: I-57, I-294, I-80.
- CPKC Bensenville and UP Global II: I-294, I-190, I-290, Irving Park Road.
- Northwest Indiana deliveries: I-80/94 across the state line, often after an out-gate at NS Calumet or CN Harvey.
Travel time varies with the time of day, weather and terminal traffic. We will not invent an average turn time and put it on this page. A realistic appointment window, and a dock that knows the truck is coming, do more for a Chicago dray than any slogan.
4. Live unload, or a drop
At the warehouse the freight either comes off while the driver waits (a live unload) or the container and chassis are dropped for a later unload (a drop and hook, when the receiver and the equipment rules allow it). City docks and food receivers often require appointments and live unloads. Will County parks are more likely to allow drops, but that is a receiver rule, not a law of geography. Ask your warehouse how they take boxes, and tell us, before the truck is on the way.
If the freight needs to change equipment (a 40-foot international container going out as a 53-foot domestic trailer, for example), that is a transload. If it needs to move from an inbound door straight onto an outbound trailer, that is a cross-dock. Both are described on our warehousing page.
5. The empty return
Once the box is empty, it has to go back to the place the railroad or steamship line designates, which is often the same ramp and sometimes a different one. Empty returns have their own last free day. A missed empty return is how per diem starts. The job is not done at the warehouse dock; it is done when the empty is in before the last free day, and the paperwork matches.
What to send us
To price or book a Chicago dray, we need the container number, the steamship line for an international box, the ramp name (not just "Chicago"), the delivery address, the cargo weight, the last free day, whether the receiver unloads live or takes a drop, and any appointment window. The Rail ramps section on our Drayage / transload page is the service view; our service-area pages describe the communities around the ramps. To get a number on a specific lane, request a quote or call 708-570-1040.