Heavy, awkward or fragile. Usually all three.
Four commodity groups make up most of what crosses our docks. Each one fails in a different way when it's handled by a generalist — so each one gets its own equipment and its own procedure.
Coils, sheets, pipe, billets and ingots
A single steel coil can put a 20' container over the legal road limit before it leaves the terminal. Most warehouses can't legally receive it; ours can.
Two facilities sit on the POLB Overweight Corridor, so sealed boxes up to 95,000 lb gross come straight to the dock on tri-axle chassis. Inside, coil rams and 30,000 lb forklifts work on floor rated for point loads — no splitting cargo at the terminal, no second drayage move.
Paper rolls and copy paper
A crushed edge or a torn wrap turns a full roll into scrap. Paper claims come from one place: the wrong clamp pressure at the wrong moment.
Rolls move on pressure-controlled clamp trucks operated by crews who handle paper daily — never hooks, never bare forks. Everything stores off the floor, wrapped, and copy paper stays palletized through the whole chain to keep cartons square.
Handled to the commodity
Clamp trucks for paper, slip-sheets for lumber — the equipment matches the freight, not the other way round.
Lumber, plywood, tile and flooring
Floor-loaded containers, odd crate lengths, mixed bundle sizes — wood shipments rarely match the racking they're headed for.
Crews unload by hand or by slip-sheet as the cargo demands, re-band broken bundles at the dock, and transload to flatbed or van depending on the crate. Tile and flooring get stacked to height limits that protect the bottom cartons, not to whatever fills the trailer fastest.
Beverage
Dense, heavy pallets against fixed retail delivery windows. A missed appointment costs more than the freight.
Full containers turn through the corridor warehouses, get staged by delivery window, and go out on group trucks — regional lanes on Kair Harbor Transport, last-mile on Aurora Star. Same-day transload keeps product moving instead of sitting on demurrage.