The Changing Landscape of Port Drayage on the East Coast
The freight and logistics industry is no stranger to disruption, but what is happening right now along the East Coast is something that supply chain professionals cannot afford to ignore. A powerful combination of major port infrastructure expansions, rising cargo volumes, and rapid technological adoption is fundamentally reshaping how drayage operations are planned and executed. Industry executives who appeared on FreightWaves Today are sounding the alarm — and offering solutions — for a sector that is being pushed to evolve faster than ever before.
Bo Bates, CEO of the Evans Network of Companies, was among the logistics leaders speaking candidly about the pressure points and opportunities defining today's drayage environment. His insights, shared during a live broadcast of FreightWaves Today, shed light on the operational priorities that will separate efficient, profitable carriers from those struggling to keep pace with growing demand.
Why Port Infrastructure Expansion Is Putting Drayage Under the Microscope
Coastal ports along the East Coast are in the middle of significant infrastructure investments. Deeper berths, expanded terminal capacity, and modernized equipment handling systems are allowing ports to accommodate larger vessels and higher cargo throughput than ever before. While this is broadly positive news for shippers and beneficial for the broader supply chain, it also places immense new strain on the drayage sector, which serves as the critical last link between the port terminal and inland distribution points.
When ports can handle more ships and more containers, the landside logistics network must scale accordingly. That means more chassis, more drivers, faster gate processing, and smarter coordination across every touchpoint. Without those improvements happening in parallel, increased port capacity simply creates new bottlenecks rather than eliminating them.
Bates emphasized that the drayage community must respond proactively. Waiting for congestion to materialize before acting is no longer a viable strategy when the volume of containers moving through these expanded gateways continues to grow month over month.
Chassis Pool Optimization: A Critical but Overlooked Priority
One of the most pressing operational challenges in port drayage is chassis availability. Without the right chassis in the right place at the right time, even the most efficient driver and carrier networks grind to a halt. Bates pointed directly to chassis pool management as a lever that the industry must pull harder if East Coast supply chains are to remain fluid.
Optimizing chassis pools involves more than simply having enough equipment on hand. It requires intelligent visibility into where chassis are sitting, how long they have been idle, and how demand is likely to shift over the coming hours and days. Carriers that can anticipate chassis demand using data-driven tools will consistently outperform those relying on outdated, reactive approaches.
- Real-time chassis location tracking reduces dead-head moves and shortens repositioning time.
- Predictive demand models allow carriers to pre-position equipment ahead of vessel arrivals.
- Collaborative chassis pool arrangements between carriers can reduce individual fleet costs while improving overall availability.
- Digital interchange systems reduce administrative delays and paperwork that slow chassis turns.
The carriers investing in these capabilities today are building a durable competitive advantage that will compound as port volumes continue to rise.
Accelerating Gate-Turn Times to Reduce Dwell and Cost
Gate-turn time — the amount of time a driver spends entering, loading or unloading, and exiting a terminal — is one of the most direct indicators of operational efficiency in port drayage. Every minute a driver sits idling in a terminal queue is a minute that could be spent completing another load, reducing costs, or improving service to a shipper.
Bates stressed that accelerating gate-turn times is not just a driver productivity issue — it is a systemic challenge that requires coordination between carriers, terminal operators, and technology providers. Appointment systems, pre-gate inspections, and digital documentation exchange all play roles in compressing the time drivers spend at the terminal, but they only work when all parties are aligned and using compatible platforms.
Terminals that have invested in automated gate technologies and optical character recognition for container scanning are already demonstrating measurably faster processing times. Carriers operating within those environments report notable improvements in driver utilization and the ability to complete more turns per shift, which directly improves revenue per truck and lowers per-unit operating costs.
Predictive Container Tracking to Combat Demurrage Fees
Perhaps the most financially impactful insight Bates shared on FreightWaves Today was the role of predictive container-tracking metrics in avoiding costly port demurrage charges. Demurrage fees — assessed when containers remain at a terminal beyond their allotted free time — have become a significant expense for shippers and carriers alike, particularly as port congestion has fluctuated over the past several years.
The traditional approach to demurrage management is largely reactive: fees accumulate, and logistics teams scramble to retrieve containers once the problem becomes visible. Predictive tracking flips that model on its head by surfacing at-risk containers before they breach free-time thresholds, giving carriers and their customers a window to act before charges are triggered.
Modern container visibility platforms can now ingest vessel arrival data, terminal release notifications, and drayage scheduling information to generate automated alerts ranked by urgency. By integrating these tools into their daily workflow, drayage operators can prioritize pickup sequences not just by customer preference but by financial risk, ensuring that the containers most likely to incur demurrage are always at the top of the dispatch queue.
Technology as the Foundation of Future Drayage Capacity
The conversation on FreightWaves Today ultimately circled back to a theme that runs through almost every discussion about logistics in 2025: technology is no longer optional infrastructure for carriers — it is the operational backbone that determines who can scale and who cannot.
As East Coast ports complete their infrastructure expansions and cargo volumes rise to meet new capacity, the drayage sector will face a defining test. Carriers that have built robust technology stacks — encompassing chassis visibility, predictive analytics, digital gate processing, and real-time container tracking — will be positioned to absorb increased volume efficiently and profitably. Those that have not will find themselves constrained by the same friction points that have plagued the industry for years, even as the ports around them become more capable.
Executives like Bo Bates are not just describing a problem — they are mapping a clear path forward. Investing in data, optimizing chassis pools, shortening gate turns, and deploying predictive tools to manage demurrage risk are not futuristic concepts. They are actionable priorities that forward-thinking carriers and drayage operators can implement today to build stronger, more resilient East Coast supply chain operations for the years ahead.