Doubling Down on Drayage
At this year’s Harbor Trucking Association DrayTECH event, we are announcing an agreement to open a massive new 18-acre drayage yard, just 15 minutes away from where container ships dock. Forgive the pun, but we viewed the yard as a crucial piece of “beachfront property” that helps us further implement our Relay program.
To put that 18-acres in perspective, our new yard now has the capacity to handle shipments of more than 400,000 espresso machines or 210,000 electric scooters each day. You’d need that many scooters to handle that much caffeine.
When we launched Relay last year, the idea was to create a method for alleviating congestion at the ports. Our aim was to give port truck drivers the opportunity to make more money from increased loads and quicker turn times every day. The domino effect of a successful Relay program also means shippers get their containers offloaded and through customs more rapidly, and onto the final destination.
So far, Relay has delivered on the promises we believed it would. Drivers working with us are seeing their incomes increase by up to 50 percent, while our shippers are seeing over 150 percent more containers pulled daily. This growth has all been achieved with an 8-acre yard in Gardena, CA, which is further away from the ports—imagine what will be possible for our customers with our new yard.
The new Long Beach yard is a logical extension of our approach and will increase our capacity to uplevel Relay’s efficiency on an even larger scale.
