Seven categories, grouped the way our desks are. Every answer here matches what a coordinator would tell you on the phone.
How we work, who we are, and what to expect before you've booked anything.
We move freight by air, sea and road, relocate pets, and store inventory — all under one company rather than as a broker stitching together other people's services.
We hold our own motor carrier authority, our own FMC licence and our own customs brokerage, and we run 640 company trucks out of nine distribution centers. That matters because it means one reference number, one invoice and one person accountable when something goes wrong.
Send us four things and we can price almost anything:
A coordinator comes back within one business hour with a firm rate including every accessorial, duty and fee we can foresee. Complex multi-leg or project cargo takes longer, and we'll tell you that upfront rather than leaving you waiting.
The short version: air when being late costs more than the freight bill, sea when the cargo is heavy or bulky and the date is a plan rather than an emergency, road for anything within North America.
You don't have to decide. Tell us what's moving and when it needs to land, and we'll price the realistic options side by side. We'd rather sell you the cheaper mode and keep the account than win one expensive booking.
Yes. Every account gets a named coordinator with a direct line and an after-hours number, not a ticket queue and a reference code.
Behind them, dispatch is staffed 24 hours a day, every day of the year from Memphis. If your coordinator is asleep and your truck has a problem at 3 a.m., someone who can actually act on it answers the phone.
Standard carrier liability — the cover that comes automatically with any freight service, ours included — is limited by law and convention, and usually pays a fraction of what your goods are worth.
That's why we write separate all-risk coverage up to $250,000 per shipment, quoted on the same page as the freight rate and settled in-house within 15 business days. No third-party adjuster. For cargo worth more than that limit, tell us the value and we'll arrange cover before it moves.
Less than people assume. Most hazardous materials move under IATA or DOT rules with correct packing, marking and declarations — lithium batteries, aerosols, paints and dry ice included.
We won't carry cash and bearer instruments, illegal goods, unlicensed firearms or ammunition, live animals outside our pet relocation program, or anything sanctioned for the destination. Explosives and certain infectious substances are refused outright. Send the commodity and its safety data sheet and we'll confirm before you commit to anything.
Next-flight-out, consolidated and charter cargo through 40+ US gateways.
Domestic next-flight-out is typically next business day door to door if we have the tender before 4:00 PM local. Consolidated domestic air runs 2–3 days.
International moves 1–4 days depending on the lane and whether customs pulls the entry for examination. Your quote states the committed window for your specific routing, not a marketing average.
Whichever is greater. Airlines charge on chargeable weight — the higher of actual weight and volumetric weight, calculated from the dimensions of the finished pallet.
Light, bulky freight almost always prices on volume. We measure and weigh at our warehouse before tendering, and if the built pallet comes in under the quoted figure your invoice drops to match.
Your coordinator calls you — before the tracking page updates and before you notice. We rebook on the next available deck, and if the original commitment can't be met, we tell you the new one in the same call.
Block-space agreements on our core lanes exist specifically to make this rare. On a guaranteed service that we miss, the freight charge is credited back with no claim form.
Yes. We move pharmaceuticals, fresh produce, seafood and cut flowers in temperature-controlled ULDs with active monitoring, and hand off to a refrigerated truck on the final mile so the chain isn't broken at the airport.
Tell us the required temperature band and the maximum time out of refrigeration your product tolerates, and we'll build the routing around it rather than booking the cheapest flight and hoping.
Three situations, mainly: the cargo is too large or too heavy for a commercial deck, the lane has no commercial capacity in your window, or the cost of waiting genuinely exceeds the cost of the aircraft — a stopped production line, for instance.
Charter is expensive and we won't push it. If a commercial routing gets your freight there in time, we'll quote that instead and say why.
FCL and LCL sailings through Long Beach, Newark, Savannah and Houston.
Port to port, transpacific into the West Coast typically runs 14–20 days, transatlantic into the East Coast around 10–16. Those are sailing times, not door-to-door times.
Add roughly a week at each end for pickup, gate-in, customs clearance and drayage — and another 5–8 days on LCL for consolidation and de-consolidation. Your quote states the full door-to-door window for your lane.
Once you're filling roughly half a container or more, FCL usually costs less per unit even with empty space, and it's faster because nothing gets consolidated or broken down.
Below that, LCL almost always wins. Take FCL earlier than the maths suggests if your cargo is fragile, high-value or awkward to handle — a sealed box is touched far less than pallets moving through two consolidation warehouses. We price both on every quote.
Demurrage is charged when your container sits at the terminal past its free time. Detention is charged when you keep the container out past the allowance after collecting it. Both accrue daily.
We schedule drayage against the free-time clock to avoid them, and give you the last safe collection date in writing. If a charge is caused by our scheduling, we absorb it. If it's caused by your dock not being ready or a customs examination, it passes through at cost with the terminal invoice attached — never marked up.
We handle it. Licensed customs brokers on our staff file the entry, the ISF and the HTS classification directly — you don't need to appoint anyone else, and there's no third party to chase for a status update.
Duties and taxes are estimated on your original quote so the arrival invoice holds no surprises. Overseas, we work with licensed brokers in the destination market who file under our reference number, not a separate one.
Usually, yes. Open-top containers take cargo that's too tall to load through the doors, flat-racks take anything too wide, and genuine breakbulk goes on deck or in the hold as an individual piece.
Oversized cargo needs a lift plan, securing calculations and often port approval, so give us as much notice as you can. Send dimensions, weight and a photo if you have one — that's usually enough for us to tell you what's possible.
FTL, LTL and expedited trucking across 48 states, plus Canada and Mexico.
The rough line is six pallets. Below that, LTL is almost always cheaper because you only pay for the space you occupy. Above it, FTL usually wins even with empty trailer space.
Take FTL earlier than the maths suggests if your freight is fragile, valuable or on a tight clock. LTL moves through cross-docks and gets handled several times; a full truckload is loaded once, sealed, and opened at delivery.
A single driver covers roughly 500 miles a day once federal hours-of-service limits are respected. Los Angeles to New York is about 2,800 miles, so five to six days solo.
Team drivers cut that to two or three days by running in shifts, which is what goes on expedited bookings. LTL takes longer than either because freight routes through cross-docks — typically 4–7 days coast to coast.
Detention applies when a driver waits at your dock beyond the free loading time. Accessorials are the extras — lift gate, inside delivery, residential access, limited-access sites, reconsignment and layover.
Every one appears on your original quote with its rate, so nothing new turns up on the invoice. If a wait is caused by our scheduling, we don't charge for it.
The large majority of our freight moves on our own trucks with our own drivers. Where a lane falls outside our network or the fleet is committed, we use a vetted partner carrier — and we tell you at quote stage, not afterwards.
Partner carriers hold minimum $1M auto liability and $100,000 cargo cover, a satisfactory FMCSA rating, and are scored quarterly on the same on-time metric as our own drivers. Either way the booking stays on our reference number and your coordinator answers for it.
Yes, but not in a 53-foot trailer — most residential streets can't take one, and there's rarely a dock at the other end. Residential deliveries run in a 26-foot straight truck with a lift gate.
Tell us it's a home address when you book. Residential delivery and lift-gate service are quoted upfront as accessorials; discovering them on the day is what causes redelivery fees, and we'd rather neither of us paid those.
Domestic and international moves for cats, dogs and small animals.
For the large majority of healthy cats and dogs, yes. The hold used for live animals is pressurised, heated and lit. Airlines with dedicated live-animal programs board animals last and unload them first, and incidents are rare.
But flying is not right for every animal. Age, existing heart or respiratory conditions, extreme anxiety and snub-nosed breeds all raise the risk meaningfully. We assess each pet with your vet's input, and if we think a route isn't advisable we say so and suggest ground transport or different timing instead.
Domestically, most airlines want a health certificate from a USDA-accredited veterinarian issued within ten days of travel, plus current rabies records. Some states add their own requirements.
International is a different scale: an import permit, an ISO-standard microchip, rabies vaccination given after the chip, often a rabies titer blood test with a waiting period of up to three months, and APHIS endorsement of the certificate. We assemble all of it and build the calendar backwards from your travel date.
Domestic: three to four weeks is comfortable. International: start three to six months out — not because the booking takes that long, but because titer tests and their waiting periods do, and those cannot be shortened.
If your move is sooner, call anyway. We can often work with a tight timeline, and we'd rather tell you early that a date isn't achievable than have you find out at the counter.
Often not, and we won't pretend otherwise. Snub-nosed (brachycephalic) breeds — bulldogs, pugs, boxers, Persian and Himalayan cats among others — have airways that make heat and stress genuinely dangerous. Many airlines refuse them outright.
Where flying isn't appropriate, ground transport usually is: climate-controlled vans, regular stops, one driver the whole way, no altitude change. Tell us the breed at the consultation and we'll lay out what's actually available.
Yes, and you won't have to ask. A photo and a short message go to your phone at collection, at check-in, at the gate and on arrival, plus a call once they're inside your new home and settled.
Your coordinator's direct number is on the booking, and someone answers it around the clock for as long as your animal is travelling.
2.4 million square feet across nine company-operated distribution centers.
Shared warehousing is priced on pallet positions per month plus a handling charge in and out. Dedicated space is priced per square foot on a term agreement. Value-added work is quoted per unit or per hour.
Every rate appears on the quote before you sign, including the handling charges people usually discover later. No separate receiving fee, no charge to pull your own reports, and no minimum term on shared storage.
Yes, without asking anyone. Your portal shows live on-hand counts by SKU and bin location, inbound and outbound history, ageing reports and cycle-count results. It updates as pallets are scanned, not overnight.
If you'd rather see it inside your own system, we integrate through a REST API or standard EDI — 940, 943, 944, 945 and 947 are supported, with a sandbox environment for testing before go-live.
Damage found on arrival is photographed and reported to you the same day, before we sign for it — which is what protects your claim against the inbound carrier.
Damage or loss occurring while goods are in our care is ours. We carry warehouse legal liability cover and settle in-house, and separate all-risk coverage is available if you want inventory insured at full value rather than at the statutory liability limit.
Shared pallet storage can usually take your first delivery within a week of signing. Dedicated space depends on what's free at the site you need, and typically runs three to six weeks including setup and system integration.
Scaling is the point of shared storage: take fifty positions in March and six hundred in October, and pay for what you occupy each month. Outgrow shared space entirely and we'll move you into dedicated square footage in the same building rather than make you relocate.
Both. Orders drop in from your system or ours, get picked to a scanned bin location, then packed, labelled and staged. Same-day cut-off is 2:00 PM local at every site.
We also handle kitting, retail and compliance labelling, re-palletising, returns inspection and cross-docking — done in the building where your stock already sits, rather than shipped somewhere else first.
Invoices, payment terms, tracking, documents and claims.
Enter your reference number on the tracking page. Every unit is scanned at pickup, hub, transfer and delivery, and truckload freight also reports live GPS position rather than just the last terminal scan.
You can switch on email or SMS alerts so each scan pushes to you automatically — most customers find they stop checking the page entirely after that.
Usually because there's genuinely nothing to report yet. Scans happen at fixed points, so an ocean container can sit at "sailed" for two weeks and a truck between hubs may not scan for several hundred miles — neither means anything is wrong.
If a milestone is more than 24 hours later than the schedule said, call your coordinator. In most cases they'll already know why and will have been about to call you.
Established accounts are invoiced on net 30 terms from the invoice date. New customers and one-off shipments are prepaid, and we'll set up credit terms once there's a payment history — usually after three or four completed bookings.
We accept ACH, wire and major credit cards. There's no card surcharge on freight charges. Duties and taxes we advance on your behalf are billed at cost with the government receipt attached.
It shouldn't, and when it does there are usually only three reasons: the freight weighed or measured differently to what was declared, a service was added on the day (a lift gate, a second delivery attempt, detention), or a duty or terminal charge came in above the estimate.
Every one of those is itemised on the invoice with the supporting document attached. If a line still doesn't make sense, send the invoice number to your coordinator — we'll explain it or credit it within two business days, and you don't need to pay the disputed line while we look.
Signed proof of delivery is emailed automatically the same day the freight is delivered, and stays on the shipment record permanently. Bills of lading, air waybills, customs entries and commercial invoices all live on the same record.
You can download any of them from the portal at any point, including years later for an audit. No request form, no fee.
Note the damage on the delivery receipt before the driver leaves, photograph it, and tell your coordinator. That note is the single thing that most often decides whether a claim succeeds, so it's worth the two minutes at the door.
Send the photos, the delivery receipt and a commercial invoice showing value. Claims on our own all-risk coverage are assessed and settled in-house within 15 business days — there's no third-party adjuster in the middle, and your coordinator stays on it until it's paid.
Ask us directly. Dispatch is staffed 24 hours a day, every day of the year, and you'll get a coordinator who can actually answer — not a script and a ticket number.
Air, sea, road and warehousing under one manifest. Moving American freight since 1997.
