ODFL opens up its its first container drayage facility in the Pacific Northwest

Less-than-truckload (LTL) transportation services provider Old Dominion Freight Line (ODFL) recently announced it has opened its first container drayage facility in the Pacific Northwest.

The company said its Seattle-Tacoma Drayage Operation will directly serve all ports, rail heads, and container yards in the Pacific Northwest, including the two largest ports in Washington, Seattle and Tacoma, whom cumulatively handled more than $70 billion in cargo in 2010. It is co-located with ODFL’s Seattle Service Center, which opened in 2003.

Company officials said ODFL’s container drayage services, which the company has operated for more than 50 years, include direct point-to-point delivery, loading, unloading, short-term warehousing, and container pools for both import and export shippers.  Other services include container drayage, transload, short term storage, LTL, deconsolidation and consolidation and truckload.

The company’s other container drayage services are in Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, Memphis, Tenn.; Mobile, Ala.; Norfolk, Va., Wilmington, N.C., Charlotte, N.C., Charleston, S.C., Savannah, Ga., Huntsville, Ala. and Jacksonville, Fla.

“We opened the facility to further expand our national container drayage network and continue serving major U.S. markets,” said Wayne Bersch, ODFL director of container operations. “In the past two years, we have experienced significant growth in container drayage shipments nationwide (a 35 percent increase in shipments in 2010 and a 19 percent increase in shipments in 2011). This facility will help us to continue our growth in this division.”

Bersch said ODFL has been planning for this new facility for well over a year. And he added that the Seattle-Tacoma drayage facility’s site will now give shippers in the Pacific Northwest access to Old Dominion’s best in class container drayage services.

With the facility just opening, Bersch explained it is hard to project how many shippers we will serve.

“However, based on the success of our other container drayage operations and the facility’s strategic location near the ports of Seattle and Tacoma, we are expecting the service to grow over the next year,” he said. “Our commitment to service helps us deliver a container drayage service that exceeds the quality of similar services provided by our counterparts. This service is bolstered by one of the largest and most consistently successful trucking companies in the U.S.”

Five drivers will be working for the Seattle-Tacoma Drayage Operation alongside the nearly 100 employees based at the Seattle Service Center, according to Bersch.