An opened shipping container floor-loaded with cartons at a dock
Import handling

Containers stripped, palletised, put away.

Import freight arrives floor loaded and has to be turned into something a rack can hold. That is devanning, and doing it near the port is the whole point.

What is container devanning?

Container devanning is unloading an import container and consolidating its contents onto pallets. Ocean freight is often floor loaded to maximise cube, so it arrives with no pallets and cannot be racked or shipped domestically until it has been devanned and restacked.

The work is unglamorous and it is where import timelines are usually won or lost. A container that sits waiting to be stripped is accruing demurrage at the terminal and per diem on the box itself.

Why does devanning close to the port matter?

A floor-loaded container is the least efficient way to move goods overland. Every mile driven before devanning moves air and hand-stacked cartons rather than pallets. Devanning near the port shortens that leg and returns the box sooner, which is what limits demurrage and per diem.

Our facility sits in Fort Lauderdale, close to Port Everglades and to Miami. For import volume entering through South Florida, the drayage leg before devanning is short.

What happens to freight after devanning
OutcomeBilled asWhen it fits
Racked and storedStorage per positionDestination not yet known
Shipped straight outOutbound handling onlyDestination known on arrival
Held short term then releasedOverflow storageWaiting on a delivery window

The South Florida facility

After the strip

Three ways a container ends. One dock.

01 / Racked

Palletised and put away

Cartons are built to pallets, wrapped and racked into numbered positions. Billed from that point as storage, per position per month.

02 / Straight out

Devanned and reloaded

The load goes from container to outbound trailer without being put away, so there is no storage line at all, only the handling.

03 / Held short

Staged for a delivery window

Palletised and held for the weeks until a receiving appointment opens, then released. Overflow terms rather than a term agreement.

All three start with the same job: a floor-loaded box stripped by hand and the contents made into pallets. What changes afterwards is only how long they stay.

Request rates

Tell us what you need to store.

Pallet count and dwell time are the two figures that set the price. Send those and you get real numbers back, not a discovery call.

We reply the same working day.