You do not get to schedule the demand. Volume steps up in specific weeks instead of seasons, a missed receiving appointment comes back days later, and every container past its last free day bills by the day. We coordinate drayage, transloading, dry van, partial and LTL capacity so the dock never waits on a truck.
In short
The freight is usually bought by the operator, not by the brand that owns the goods. A 3PL or fulfillment provider buys transportation for dozens of clients at once, each with its own SKUs, its own receiving rules and its own promise date printed on a checkout page. Two things follow. Volume does not curve, it steps: a launch, a promotion or a marketplace sales event triples inbound for a set of weeks and then drops back, so capacity has to be bought for peaks that do not repeat monthly. And the deadline sits downstream of you. A container that misses the transload, a pallet that misses the receiving appointment and a linehaul that misses the parcel induction cut all land in the same place, which is a buyer looking at a delivery date that no longer holds. On top of that, every cost you incur is a pass through: detention, per diem and a redelivery all get allocated back to one client's account, so the freight has to stay traceable to an order, not just to a lane.
The cargo
What decides the load
The gist of each one here. The shipping guide has every one in full.
A 3PL's freight is never one profile. In the same week you are pulling one client's import containers off the port, delivering a second client's forty SKU pallet into a marketplace receiving dock, hauling a third client's returns back out of a processing site and bringing a fourth client's cartons in from a packaging converter.
Read it in full in the guideImport freight has two meters running and they are not the same meter. Demurrage is what the terminal charges while the container is still inside the gate past its free time.
Read it in full in the guideNearly every large fulfillment receiver books inbound through a portal. You request a window, you get a reference number, and the trailer is expected inside that window with paperwork that matches what was declared.
Read it in full in the guideE-commerce peak does not behave like a harvest or a retail set calendar. It concentrates into short stretches with hard edges: the mid summer marketplace sales events, the inbound cutoff dates fulfillment networks publish weeks ahead of the holiday, the run from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday, and then January, when returns reverse the whole flow and a network that spent November shipping out spends the new year receiving.
Read it in full in the guideMixed SKU pallets fail structurally more often than single SKU pallets, and the reason is geometry.
Read it in full in the guideStart with what Dobie is. Coordinated transportation: a vetted carrier network managed by dedicated logistics specialists.
Read it in full in the guide
The numbers
Who this is for
The process
Container number and last free day, or the receiving appointment and its reference. Then pallet count, dimensions, weight, the receiver's published spec, which client account the freight belongs to, and whether the box is floor loaded or palletized. That set of facts decides the mode, not the lane.
Sometimes that is the appointment window, sometimes it is per diem on the box, sometimes it is a parcel induction cut. Direct delivery, transload, cross-dock or drop is chosen against whichever one bites first, and the empty return is scheduled at the same time as the pull.
Authority, cargo insurance and equipment checked against this load: the right chassis for the weight, a clean dry trailer for cartons and consumer goods, seal protocol agreed, and the appointment reference in the driver's hands before he reaches a gate that will not admit him without it.
Status through transit, arrival confirmed against the booked window, empty return confirmed against free days, and signed paperwork returned, so a shortage, a refusal or a per diem charge gets argued with a record instead of a memory, and rebilled to the right client account.
Equipment
The modes an e-commerce and 3PL program actually buys, one page each.
That is the normal assignment. Send the container and booking numbers, the terminal or ramp, the last free day and the delivery point, and the pull is scheduled against actual availability with the empty return booked at the same time, not after delivery. Where the box cannot be emptied inside free days, transloading into a van is the standard answer: the freight keeps moving, the container goes back, and the meter stops.
Three things decide it. Distance, because a box that has to travel far from the port is expensive equipment to tie up and still has to come back. Cube, because roughly three 40 foot high cubes fill two 53 foot vans when the freight cubes out before it weighs out, which is the normal case for cartoned consumer goods. And the receiving dock, because most fulfillment and marketplace docks want palletized, labeled freight rather than a floor loaded container that takes hours to strip. If the delivery is close to the port, the dock can handle the box and free time is comfortable, direct is cheaper. Otherwise transload usually wins.
Yes. Give us the appointment reference and window, the receiver's published pallet and label spec, and the shipment identifiers that belong on the bill of lading. Transit is planned backward from that window, the driver carries the reference before he reaches the gate, and the load plan is frozen against the slot so the declaration, the appointment and the freight on the trailer still describe the same shipment. Who books the slot, you or us, is an account setup question we confirm on the first call.
With a calendar instead of heroics. Inbound cutoff dates, expected container arrivals and the repositioning plan get handed over before the surge, and lanes are covered against those dates out of a nationwide network of vetted carriers. That matters most in drayage, because port capacity exhausts regionally in exactly the weeks everyone in your cluster needs it. Between peaks the volume simply drops, which is the point of buying coordinated capacity instead of carrying it.
Yes, and it is worth planning as its own lane rather than as leftover capacity. FC to FC repositioning runs dry van or full truckload, and the deadline is commercial: stock has to land, be received and go sellable before the promotion or the season it was moved for. Repositioning to shorten a parcel zone only pays if the transfer arrives early enough to be picked from, so the transit is planned against the go live date, not against the load date.
Yes. Consolidated returns and closeout lots move like any other freight, with two differences worth planning for. First, the receiving site has its own appointment rules and hours, and a liquidation buyer's yard usually has fewer doors and shorter hours than the fulfillment center the freight came from. Second, a return trailer is unmanifested by nature and can contain aerosols or lithium batteries, including damaged or recalled cells that are regulated differently from a new battery inside a device. Describe what is likely in the load and the equipment and the paperwork get assigned for it.
No, and it is better that you hear it plainly. Dobie coordinates transportation, it does not operate warehouses or fulfillment centers. What exists is transload and cross-dock capacity in the carrier network for stripping a container, rebuilding pallets to a receiver's spec and staging freight for a booked window. Which locations serve your port and FC map, and what they can and cannot do with your freight, gets confirmed with you directly rather than promised on a page.
Yes, as a scheduled linehaul planned backward from the induction cut, including the traffic pattern into that hub at the hour you arrive. The agreement with the parcel carrier and the hub is yours, and the cut time is theirs. What a transportation partner controls is arriving inside it, which is the whole job, since a trailer that misses induction moves every tracking number on it by a day.
Yes, and it is worth treating as a different animal from your inbound program. A node buildout is project cargo: deliveries sequenced to the installation schedule instead of to a receiving portal, flatbed or step deck for racking bundles and conveyor sections, and permits with a routed survey for any piece over legal width or height. It is quoted off drawings and an install calendar, not off a lane rate, and it wants to be booked well before the first pallet of inventory is scheduled to arrive.
Yes. The South Texas corridor is home territory here, and the crossing is planned inside the delivery window rather than treated as a separate project: the customs broker's timing, the yard transfer and the handoff to the carrier on the other side all sit inside one schedule. Cross-border e-commerce moves in both directions, outbound to Mexican buyers and back north as returns and imported inventory, and both legs get coordinated the same way.
Last reviewed: August 2026 · Reviewed by the Dobie Transport logistics team
A logistics specialist reviews your lanes and comes back with pricing and capacity. Support runs 24/7.
Every carrier is vetted for operating authority and insurance, and we check the certificate before every dispatch, not once a year. USDOT 3411782 · MC 1100274
