Container unloading

Palletized and floor-loaded are two different jobs

If the container was stuffed onto pallets, unloading it is a forklift job and it is quick. The pallets come off, they are counted, and they go to a rack or onto a trailer.

Floor-loaded is different. The cargo was stacked in by hand at origin, usually to get every cubic foot out of the box, and it comes out the same way it went in. That is a crew, by hand, for hours. A floor-loaded 40ft or high cube is roughly double the work of a 20, because it is roughly double the box, and that is why you will see it priced separately rather than as one devanning rate.

Worth knowing before you book: nobody can tell from the paperwork which one you have. If the packing list says cartons and gives no pallet count, assume floor-loaded and say so when you ask for a price, because discovering it at the dock costs an afternoon.

What a lumper crew is, and when you need one

A lumper is the crew that does the physical unloading. On palletized freight our own people handle it. On a heavy floor-loaded container, or anything that needs sorting as it comes off, it is a dedicated crew and it is a separate line on the quote.

It is not an upsell. It is the honest answer to a floor-loaded 40: somebody is moving every carton by hand, and the only question is whether that is planned for or discovered.

The reason to unload here rather than at your door

Per diem. While the container is out of the terminal it belongs to the shipping line and the clock runs the whole time, including the days it sits at your warehouse waiting for a crew and the trip back empty.

Devanning a short run from the port means the box is emptied and returned the same day, and the freight waits on your schedule instead of the line's. On a slow unload that difference is usually larger than the unloading itself.

It is also the moment to catch a problem. Freight comes out under a count, and anything short, wet or crushed is documented then, with photographs, while the container it came out of is still in front of us. Discover it a week later at your own dock and the conversation with the line is much harder.

What happens to the freight after it comes out

Three doors, and you pick before it moves. Straight onto a trailer for the inland run, which is transload. Onto a rack for storage. Or off one trailer and onto another the same day without touching a rack, which is cross-dock.

It can also be palletized on the way out, which is its own line: cargo that arrived floor-loaded leaves on pallets, wrapped and labelled, ready for a receiver who will not take loose cartons.

Tell us which of those you want when you book, because it changes where the freight is staged as it comes off, and restaging a container's worth of cartons is the one avoidable cost in this whole operation.