It’s not the destination, but the journey.
If you’ve ever taken a car to the airport, flown to another city, then boarded a bus or shuttle to your hotel, you know what transloading is. It’s using more than one mode of transportation to move goods where they need to go, on time.
I clearly remember taking a motorcycle to Tampa airport, stepping into an electric tram to the terminal, boarding a plane to New York, getting on a bus to the train station, riding the train to Grand Central Station, and finally taking a taxi to my destination near Times Square. Throw in an escalator ride and that’s 7 modes of transportation in one brief afternoon.
Trains, Planes and Automobiles
In terms of freight, transloading is not quite as dramatic. We smoothly move your freight from rail to truck, truck to rail, container to truck, or truck to container. No motorcycles, electric trams or taxis. The whole purpose is to lower your costs and solve shipping problems. For example, most cities are serviced by rail, but most companies are not. So it makes sense to ship via a combination of truck and rail, often back to truck to overcome the shortage of rail lines or a lack of rail capacity during seasonal peak production.
By Land, Sea or Air
At WhiteStar, we are directly connected to both truck and rail lines and frequently provide transloading services for a wide range of industries and products requiring a blend of transportation modalities to get the job done. Many products are sent via 20- or 40-foot-long shipping containers. At times, goods will be stored in our warehouses until the next leg of the journey is required.
With shipments bound for the DFW or Houston areas, the final phase of transportation is usually via short-haul truck. WhiteStar has it’s own fleet of trucks and drivers, but we always find and recommend the optimum mode of transportation to bring the journey to a perfect end.