You need drayage. Let’s set the scene.

You’re on a call with your drayage carrier. They’re explaining why your shipment is delayed. The words coming at you include “chassis split,” “grounded facility,” “per diem,” and something about a “repo” that definitely doesn’t involve a car being taken from a driveway.

You nod. You say “got it.” You hang up and immediately Google all of it.

No shame. This industry has spent decades building a vocabulary that functions as an informal entry exam. If you grew up in intermodal, it’s second nature. If you didn’t, it’s a foreign language with no Rosetta Stone and significant financial consequences for guessing wrong.

Consider this your decoder ring.

Accessorial (also: Ancillary Charge)

Any charge beyond the base line-haul rate. Think of it like airline fees — the ticket price gets you in the door, but the bag, the seat selection, and the in-flight Wi-Fi are all extra. In drayage, accessorials include chassis fees, detention, pre-pull, and lift charges, among others. Some carriers quote them upfront. Others… don’t. Ask before you move freight.

Bobtail

A truck cab driving without a trailer or chassis attached. If your driver is running bobtail, they’re on their way to pick something up — or they just dropped something off and are headed back. It’s not a problem. It’s just a term worth knowing so you don’t panic when someone says it.

Chassis

The wheeled frame that sits under an intermodal container and connects it to the truck. Without one, the container goes nowhere. The chassis world is its own saga — involving steamship lines, third-party providers like DCLI and TRAC, railroads, and daily availability checks that can send a dispatcher to the portal three times before 8 a.m. More on this below.

Chassis Split

When a carrier has to pick up a chassis from a separate location — a depot — before picking up the container. This happens when the rail facility doesn’t have chassis on site (see: Grounded Facility). It adds time, mileage, and typically a charge. If you see “chassis split” on an invoice and didn’t know what it was, you’ve now been paying for it anyway.

Crosstown (also: Repo, Reposition)

Moving a container or chassis from one rail facility to another within the same city. In Chicago, you’ll hear “crosstown.” In Kansas City, the same move is often called a “repo” or “reposition.” Same job, different zip code, different vocabulary. This is why two customers can look at the same invoice, and one thinks it’s standard, and the other has never seen the charge before in their life.

Demurrage / Per Diem

Charges are assessed by the steamship line when a container isn’t returned within the allowed free time. Per diem typically refers to the daily equipment charge. Demurrage is the penalty for holding a container past the free time window. They’re related. They compound fast. And neither one cares what day of the week it is — railroads eliminated weekend free days as a revenue measure, so the clock runs 365 days a year.

Depot

An off-site facility where chassis are stored and managed by providers like DCLI or TRAC. When there’s no equipment at the rail, drivers head to the depot. In a market like Chicago, the closest available chassis might be across town — and if it’s 3 p.m. on a Thursday, “across town” is a two- to three-hour commitment.

Detention

Time a driver spends waiting beyond the standard free time at a shipper’s or receiver’s facility. After a certain threshold, that time starts generating a charge. If a driver shows up for an appointment and sits in a queue for three hours before they can load or unload, that’s detention. It’s not punitive — it’s just what happens when wait time has a cost.

Door Move

A full intermodal move from the port or rail directly to the customer’s door. Straightforward, but the terminology matters when you’re distinguishing it from a ramp move.

Free Time

The window of time granted by the steamship line or railroad during which you can use or return equipment without incurring additional charges. For international containers, you generally get more free time than for domestic containers. Once free time expires, per diem and demurrage begin to accrue. Knowing your free time window — and tracking against it — is one of the more practical ways to control landed cost.

Grounded Facility

A rail facility that doesn’t store chassis on site. Containers are taken off the train and placed directly on the ground. To pick one up, the carrier needs to bring a chassis, which requires sourcing one from a depot first. That’s a chassis split, and that’s where extra charges come from. Compare this to a mounted facility, where chassis are kept on site, and containers go directly onto wheels.

Landed Cost

The total cost of a shipment — line haul, fuel, and every accessorial included — from origin to destination. This is the number that actually matters, and it’s the one most procurement systems aren’t built to compare properly. A lower line-haul rate can easily be offset by chassis charges, detention, and per diem that a carrier with better infrastructure and planning never incurs in the first place.

Lift

The act of picking up (or setting down) a container using a crane or top-handler at a rail facility. At grounded facilities, lifting a container onto a private chassis costs money — typically $100 to $200 per lift at a rail yard twice, if the container goes back the same way.

Merchant Haulage

When the shipper or consignee arranges the inland transportation themselves, rather than letting the steamship line handle it, if you’ve ever been asked whether your move is merchant haulage or carrier haulage, that’s the distinction. Merchant haulage means you (or your drayage carrier) are managing the move independently.

Mounted Facility

A rail facility that stores chassis on site. Containers come off the train and go directly onto a chassis. More efficient — until they run out of chassis, which happens. When a mounted facility runs short, the driver has to go external for a chassis, which can create a lift charge on top of the chassis split. The wait lines can stretch to six, seven, or eight hours on a bad day.

Pre-Pull

Pulling a container out of the rail or port before the delivery appointment — to hold it in a secure yard until it’s ready to be delivered. Pre-pulls are common when containers are available early, and a customer needs time before they’re ready to receive. They typically come with a yard storage charge.

Rail Storage

Charges assessed by the railroad when a container sits in their facility beyond the allowed window. Separate from demurrage. The railroad wants containers moving, not sitting. If a train arrives before noon, you generally have until midnight the following day to pull it out. Miss that window, and the meter starts running.

Ramp Move

A move from one rail ramp to another, typically within a region. Different from a door move-in that the final destination is another rail facility, not a customer’s dock.

A Note on Geography

One more thing worth flagging: the same charge can go by different names depending on where you are. A repo in Kansas City is a crosstown in Chicago. Accessorial charges might be called ancillary charges somewhere else. The further east you go, the more old-school the terminology tends to be. The West Coast has its own conventions entirely.

This isn’t a small thing. Carriers and customers sometimes argue over invoices for charges that are actually identical—just labeled differently. Before escalating a dispute, it’s worth asking: are we talking about the same thing, or just using different words for it?

Usually, it’s the latter.

Why This Matters More Than It Should

None of these terms are obscure for the sake of being obscure. They developed organically across decades, across dozens of markets, and across an industry that’s still figuring out how to standardize basic vocabulary.

But when terminology creates confusion, it creates cost. Unapproved charges. Delayed approvals. Missed windows. Containers sitting past free time because no one was sure what to do.

The goal isn’t to turn every shipper into a drayage expert. It’s to make sure the language gap isn’t costing anyone money.

If you ever see a charge on an invoice from Mark-it Express that you don’t recognize, call us. We’ll walk through it until it makes sense. That’s not a favor — that’s just how this is supposed to work.