How US Trucking Capacity Constraints Really Hit Port Drayage

If you work in freight forwarding or NVOCC operations, you’ve probably had some version of this conversation in 2025:

“The vessel arrived last week.”
“Yes, the container is available.”
“No, it hasn’t left the terminal yet.”

From a shipper’s perspective, that makes no sense. From an LSP’s perspective, it’s becoming the norm at certain US gateways.

What’s changed is not the definition of “arrival,” but the reliability of the shortest leg in the chain. Driver availability, chassis access, and tightening gate systems mean that port drayage—historically an afterthought in many supply chain designs—is now a primary source of delay and cost.

In this post, we unpack how US trucking capacity constraints are actually hitting port drayage, the warning signs LSPs should watch for by lane and port, and how to use event-level data to keep containers from silently aging in the stack.

1. The 2025 US Trucking Reality: Smaller, Tighter, Uneven

1.1 The structural driver gap isn’t going away

Different sources disagree on the “true” size of the US truck driver shortage, but the ranges are consistently uncomfortable:

Many industry and banking analyses put the current gap around 60,000–80,000 drivers, with long-haul and specialized segments hardest hit.
The American Trucking Associations (ATA) and others estimate the industry will need around 1.2 million new drivers over the next decade just to replace retirements and attrition.

That gap is not evenly distributed:

Certain regions and segments—port drayage, intermodal, cross-border lanes—depend heavily on drivers with specific certifications (TWIC, hazmat), local port knowledge, and immigration backgrounds.
Labor conditions and pay have improved in some areas, but drayage remains a demanding job with tight windows and variable wait times.

In other words: the national market may look “balanced” or even “soft” at times, but specific port metros can still run structurally tight for the type of trucking drayage requires.

1.2 Policy, safety, and immigration rules are tightening the screws

On top of retirement and turnover, several 2024–2025 policy moves are shrinking or reshaping parts of the driver pool:

Stricter English-language enforcement has already sidelined thousands of drivers in roadside tests and enforcement campaigns, with immigrant drivers disproportionately affected.
New rules for non-citizen CDL holders sharply limit who can obtain certain license types and add more intensive document checks and renewal conditions.
The federal crackdown on non-compliant CDL training providers has put thousands of schools at risk of losing certification, directly narrowing the pipeline of new drivers in some regions.

For importers and LSPs, the detail of each rule matters less than the combined effect: the driver pool is under more pressure, especially in the very segments that feed ports.

2. What “Capacity Constraints” Look Like at the Terminal Gate

Most headlines talk about “driver shortages” in general.

At the port, constraints are more specific—and more layered.

2.1 The four main drayage bottlenecks

You can think of drayage capacity as a stack of dependencies:

Constraint	What It Actually Means in 2025–2026	How It Shows Up at the Port Gate
Driver availability	Smaller, aging pool; fewer non-citizen/limited-English drivers; stricter checks	Fewer carriers willing to take short-haul port work; higher minimums; longer booking times
Chassis availability	Shared pools still thin at busy gateways; imbalances between ports and inland ramps	Containers “available” in system but not physically pullable; trucks waiting for equipment
Appointment systems	Tight gate windows, limited slots, evolving dual-transaction rules	Missed appointments, rebooking delays, “no show” penalties
Inland congestion	Rail ramp dwell, warehouse bottlenecks, yard saturation	Trucks and chassis tied up longer; reduced effective capacity per truck

The important part for your customers:

Even if the vessel is on time and the container status flips to “available,” your ability to pull that box depends on all four layers lining up.

2.2 Why drayage feels tighter than “trucking in general”

Recent drayage market updates highlight that:

Booking windows have stretched at key US ports. What used to be same-day or next-day dray capacity is increasingly two to three days in advance during peak weeks.
Chassis shortages remain chronic in several gateways, especially when large vessels discharge concentrated volumes.
Terminal appointment systems have become more complex—midday closures, weekend adjustments, and stricter import blocks make it harder to “squeeze in” late-booked containers.
Inland rail and ramp congestion appears in pulses rather than constant gridlock. Those pulses still distort drayage by delaying grounding and creating sudden bursts of demand for trucks and chassis.

All of this means that drayage capacity is less elastic than many shippers assume. There’s less room for late changes and improvisation.

3. How Trucking Constraints Show Up in Your Metrics

From an LSP’s point of view, the trucking shortage doesn’t arrive as a memo. It arrives as problems.

3.1 Operational symptoms you can actually measure

Typical early warning signs include:

Longer lead times for truck bookings
- Carriers start asking for bookings 2–3 days ahead instead of “tomorrow is fine,” especially in peak season or hot-spot metros.
- Same-day rescue options become more expensive or disappear entirely.
Deteriorating discharge-to-pickup times
- Containers sit several days after becoming “available” because trucks, chassis, or appointments can’t be secured in time.
- That dwell time creeps up gradually, then suddenly feels “normal.”
Rising demurrage and detention bills
- D&D exposure shifts from rare exception to recurring cost line.
- Internal reviews show that late drayage, not terminal performance, drove many of the charge events.
More frequent no-shows / rebookings
- Carriers cancel or reschedule at short notice when their limited driver pool gets stretched across overlapping appointment windows.
- Appointment failures cause one-day slips that cascade into full missed free-time windows.
Less flexibility for gateway or routing changes
- Customers ask to re-route to a different port or change door locations late in the game.
- Under tight drayage conditions, that kind of agility suddenly comes with a steep premium—or a simple “no.”

3.2 Why LSPs get blamed first

From the cargo owner’s perspective:

The vessel arrived.
The container is “in port.”
The D&D invoice shows the container sat.

They don’t see the chassis pool, the driver shortage, the appointment system, or the inland rail delays.

They see you.

That’s why LSPs and NVOCCs increasingly need to treat drayage capacity as part of their core product design, not just an afterthought tagged onto “ocean + local trucking.”

4. Regional Patterns: It’s Not the Same at Every Port

Drayage pain in 2025–2026 is not uniform. Some gateways are structurally tighter than others.

4.1 West Coast: Bigger ships, tighter windows

At Los Angeles/Long Beach and other West Coast ports:

Larger vessels and compressed services are delivering bigger discharge peaks, which create intense but short drayage surges.
Appointment systems have grown more restrictive, especially at heavily used terminals.
Environmental and labor rules add complexity for truckers, pushing some smaller dray operators out of the market.

Even when average conditions seem “fine,” a single weather event, labor issue, or bunching of arrivals can turn into multi-day drayage delays if the local driver and chassis pool is already tight.

4.2 East & Gulf Coasts: Congestion pulses and chassis constraints

At gateways like New York/New Jersey, Savannah, and Houston:

Periodic congestion pulses still occur as import volumes shift between coasts and tariff cycles.
Chassis availability, especially at high-volume terminals, can extend dwell times by several days even when yard space exists.
Infrastructure improvements (new inland rail links, expanded yards) are underway, but many benefits won’t fully land until 2026–2027.

Shippers using these ports often experience a paradox: good ocean reliability but unpredictable inland delivery, with appointment and drayage constraints as the missing link.

4.3 Florida & the Southeast: Growth corridor with constrained specialists

Florida and the broader Southeast illustrate how growth and constraints can coexist:

Major infrastructure and port investments are drawing more cargo through the region.
At the same time, drayage updates from regional providers report chassis shortages, driver availability issues, and terminal congestion as persistent 2025 themes.
Because drayage drivers need TWIC credentials and port familiarity, the qualified driver pool is much smaller than the general trucking workforce, making constraints more acute.

For LSPs, that means Southeast gateways can be attractive alternatives to West Coast congestion—but only if you treat drayage capacity as a scarce resource, not a given.

5. A Practical Drayage Playbook for LSPs

You can’t fix the US driver market. You can design around it.

5.1 Make drayage part of the product, not a line item

Instead of treating drayage as a last-minute add-on:

Design services door-to-door, not port-to-port.
Build different lead-time templates by port and inland destination, reflecting realistic drayage windows.
For key accounts, explicitly offer:
- A “standard” option (leaner lead times, lower cost, higher risk of D&D in peak weeks), and
- A “buffered” option (more conservative timings and routing, priced to reflect reduced risk).

That shifts the conversation from “Why is drayage so expensive?” to “Which risk profile do you want to buy?”

5.2 Book drayage earlier where the data tells you to

Use a simple rule of thumb:

Where your historical data shows consistent 2–3 day discharge-to-gate-out times, treat that as the baseline—not the exception.
Lock in drayage before vessels arrive, especially during:
- Seasonal peaks
- Known congestion cycles
- Tariff-driven frontloading periods

Internally, that means tightening SOPs between your ocean teams and inland teams, so drayage planning starts once the booking is confirmed, not after the arrival notice.

5.3 Diversify your drayage capacity and gateway options

To avoid being trapped by a single hot spot:

Maintain a broader drayage carrier bench in crucial port metros, including a mix of asset-based and brokered solutions.
Where it makes sense, evaluate alternative ports or ramps:
- Example: splitting imports between two East Coast gateways instead of funnelling everything into one congested node.
Use transload or cross-dock strategies to decouple port drayage from long-haul inland:
- Quickly dray containers to a nearby cross-dock
- Strip cargo and ship inland via domestic trailers or intermodal
- Return empties faster, freeing chassis and reducing D&D risk

This doesn’t always yield the lowest theoretical cost—but in high-risk lanes, it often produces the most predictable outcome.

5.4 Turn D&D from a “surprise cost” into a managed variable

Most LSPs find out about demurrage and detention after the fact.

Instead:

Track where and when D&D charges arise: by port, customer, trade lane, and carrier.
Use that history to:
- Adjust free-time negotiation strategies (ask for targeted extra days on the lanes where you actually need them).
- Justify premium routing or longer lead times with customers using data instead of anecdotes.
- Build internal alerts for containers approaching last free day with no confirmed dray appointment.

If drayage is the new bottleneck, D&D is the financial symptom. You want to see the symptom coming, not just pay the bill.

6. Using TRADLINX as the Drayage Visibility Backbone

TRADLINX can’t conjure extra drivers or chassis. But it can make sure you never fly blind on where drayage is becoming the constraint.

With TRADLINX Ocean Visibility and container tracking, LSPs can:

See every event from gate-in at origin to empty return at destination in one timeline.
Track discharge-to-available, available-to-gate-out, and gate-out-to-delivery by port, carrier, and customer.
Identify which ports and corridors are quietly building inland dwell and D&D risk, even when vessels are on time.
Surface last free day and dwell bands directly in your workflows, so operations teams can prioritize at-risk containers.
Export clean data for customer reviews and contract negotiations—turning “we feel drayage is tight” into “here is what actually happened by lane.”

In a world where trucking constraints increasingly dictate how “congested” a port feels, event-level visibility is the difference between reactive firefighting and proactive planning.