You get a rate quote. It looks competitive. You award the business. Then the detention charges start rolling in, the container sits over free time, and by the time the freight delivers, what looked like a good deal from a drayage provider on paper ends up costing you more than the original quote you passed on.
It’s one of the most common patterns in drayage—and it’s almost entirely avoidable. Not by finding a lower rate. By asking better questions before you commit.
Here are five questions that will tell you more about a drayage provider than any rate sheet ever will.
1. How Do You Handle Chassis Access—and Who Pays When Things Go Sideways?
Chassis availability is one of the most disruptive variables in intermodal drayage, and it’s one that many shippers don’t fully understand until they’re staring at a surprise charge on an invoice.
Here’s the short version of a complicated situation: steamship lines used to provide chassis as part of the shipment. They no longer do. Today, chassis are owned by third-party providers—primarily DCLI and TRAC—whose business interests don’t always align with yours, the railroad’s, or the drayage carrier’s. When chassis aren’t available at the rail facility, a carrier has to find one at a separate depot. That’s called a chassis split—and it adds cost, time, and complexity to what was supposed to be a straightforward move.
In a city like Chicago, the only available chassis on a given day might be 60 or 70 miles on the other side of town. That’s not a small inconvenience. At rush hour in Chicago, that’s potentially a three-hour detour.
Ask your provider: Do they have established relationships with chassis pool operators? Do they track chassis availability in real time? And when a chassis split is unavoidable, how is that communicated to you—and what does it actually cost?
A provider who can answer those questions clearly is operating with the kind of transparency that protects your total landed cost. One who deflects or provides vague answers is the kind that’ll hand you a stack of accessorials three weeks after delivery.
2. How Long Have You Been Operating in Our Specific Markets—and What Does That Actually Mean?
Drayage is not uniform. A provider who runs freight smoothly in one market can struggle significantly in another—and the differences aren’t always obvious from the outside.
Take Chicago and Kansas City. Both are major intermodal markets. But Chicago runs 24/7 out of necessity—the volume demands it, and most rail and depot facilities operate around the clock. Kansas City is a different story. Depot hours are tighter, delivery windows are shorter, and the operational rhythm is entirely different. A carrier that built its model around Chicago’s pace doesn’t automatically translate to Kansas City—and vice versa.
It goes beyond hours. Local expertise means knowing which railroads operate grounded facilities versus mounted facilities, understanding which depots consistently have available equipment, knowing the specific congestion patterns at individual terminals, and having the relationships that let you solve problems before they become delays.
Ask your provider to walk you through how they actually operate in your specific markets. Not a general overview—specific. If they can’t tell you the operational differences between their Chicago terminal and their Kansas City terminal, they probably haven’t earned that knowledge yet.
3. Can I Actually See What’s Happening with My Freight in Real Time?
Daily status updates aren’t visible. They’re a summary of what already happened.
Real visibility means your freight is tracked via GPS, that data is accessible to you when you need it, and that your provider’s systems can integrate with yours. In practice, that often comes down to EDI—electronic data interchange—which allows automated, accurate updates to flow directly into your systems rather than requiring someone to check a portal or send emails manually.
This matters more than it might seem. When something goes wrong—and in drayage, something always eventually does—visibility determines how quickly you can respond. If you’re waiting on a phone call to find out your container is stuck, you’ve already lost time you can’t recover.
There’s a related point worth making: some providers are reluctant to offer full transparency because it means customers can see everything, including delays and exceptions. At Mark-it, we take the opposite view. We use GPS and ELD tracking through Samsara integrated with our TMS platform, and our customers have direct portal access to their shipments in real time. If something happens, you’ll hear from us before you have to ask.
Ask any provider you’re evaluating: what does your customer portal actually show, and how does your system connect to mine? The answer will tell you a lot about how they operate.
4. What Happens When Something Goes Wrong—Walk Me Through It.
Delays in drayage are not exceptional. They’re routine. Port closures, rail embargoes, weather, equipment failures, accidents, congestion—something is always disrupting the plan somewhere. The question isn’t whether your drayage provider will face an exception. It’s what they do when one happens.
A provider with a real contingency process doesn’t just notify you that there’s a problem. They come to you with what they’re already doing about it. That requires having options in place before the disruption hits—relationships with multiple depots, the ability to reposition equipment, and the authority to make decisions without waiting for approvals.
It also requires someone to actually answer the phone.
One of the things we hear most often from customers who move their freight to Mark-it is that they were used to waiting for callbacks. That’s a structural problem—it usually means the person fielding your call isn’t actually empowered to solve your problem. At Mark-it, our customer service, operations, and dispatch teams are separate functions. The person who picks up your call can actually do something.
Ask a prospective provider to describe a specific scenario where a disruption occurred and how they handled it. Not a script—a real example. How they answer that question will tell you more than their sales presentation.
5. Can You Show Me Evidence of Your On-Time Performance—Especially During Peak?
Every drayage provider will tell you their service is reliable. That’s table stakes. What you actually need to know is whether their service holds up when the market tightens, when everyone is trying to move freight at the same time, and when the margin for error compresses.
Peak season is when the difference between a service-first provider and a price-first provider becomes visible. Providers who compete primarily on rate often have thinner infrastructure, fewer committed drivers, and less operational buffer. That works fine in a loose market. It breaks down when things get tight.
Ask for references in your industry. Ask specifically about how they performed during the last peak season. Ask whether they track their performance metrics internally and can share them. A provider confident in their service record will have answers. One who deflects to general reassurances probably shouldn’t be running your most time-sensitive freight.
The Rate Isn’t the Cost. The Landed Cost Is.
This is worth saying plainly: the drayage rate is one line item. The landed cost is everything—detention, demurrage, accessorials, delays, and the downstream effects when freight doesn’t move on time. A provider who’s slightly more expensive on the quote but moves your freight cleanly, communicates proactively, and bills what they say they’ll bill is almost always cheaper in practice.
These five questions are designed to help you find that provider—and distinguish them from the ones who look good on a spreadsheet and cost you money in the field.
If you’d like to talk through how Mark-it Express operates across our terminals in Chicago, Kansas City, and Detroit—and get direct answers to all five of these questions—reach out to your Mark-it representative. We’d rather earn your business with a conversation than a rate.