Land Freight Forwarding

All Roads Lead to Land Transport

The CAF team can be found working around the clock to ensure uninterrupted supply chains for our shipping customers, every time. 

Every package, regardless of origin, journey or destination, takes its turn on a freight truck eventually.

Land transport may lack the glamour and awesomeness of air and maritime freight, but road freight is the one we turn to when we need the job finished. It’s steady and flexible, safe and pragmatic; it’s the Hufflepuff of intermodal transportation.

Where nature rules over air and ocean-bound freight—the winds and tides are indifferent to even the best-laid plans—the same cannot be said for land transportation. Mankind can pat itself on the back for that one. The planning, construction, and maintenance of complex networks of roads and railways, some hundreds of years old, built to reach even the most remote destinations, is an incredible, ever-evolving achievement spanning generations of trailblazers.

In many supply chains, especially across the EU, land freight is the be-all, end-all mode of transport connecting all of the dots between products and consumers. At the very least, land transport acts as the anchor leg in a supply chain relay race. 

• Transportation-related employment was 16% higher in 2017 than in 1990. When employment in some sectors suffered from the advent of automation, the transportation industry was there to pick up the slack.
• In 2015, on-road shipping by truck represented about two-thirds of domestic shipping in the United States. In the same year, more than 18 billion tons of freight valued at more than $19 trillion were moved across all modes of transportation. (About 1/10 of the tonnage by rail, but the value of that freight only represented 4% of total freight value.)
• According to the most recent economic census (2012), the motor carrier transportation mode accounted for about 53% of total transportation costs, more than double that of any other mode of transportation.

Advantages of Land Freight

• Cost-Effectiveness: Comparatively low packing and fuel costs
• Versatility: Able to handle short or long hauls, local or across borders of neighboring countries, even in rural areas
• Preparedness: A single customs document process makes for relatively seamless cross-border transport of goods
• Predictability: Scheduled delivery, easily track and trace cargo
• Convenience & Discretion: Door-to-door service—need we say more? Goods can also be kept secure and private
• Flexibility: Extensive road networks make rushed delivery possible

CAF Offers the Following Land Services

Truckload

If you ship a full truckload, your freight is the only freight in the truck. From the moment of the pickup, the truck’s only job is to get to your freight’s intended destination.

LTL (Less Than Truckload)

If you ship an LTL freight load, you are sharing space (and cost) with others. This means your shipment headed to Houston could end up accompanying other companies’ shipments to cities in several states, Cleveland and Nashville, for example, before finally reaching Houston. The entire truck is unloaded at each intermittent destination, thus increasing travel time and risk for damage by handling.

Drayage

In freight forwarding, the term drayage is most often used to refer to the trucking service from an ocean port to a warehouse, rail ramp, or other destination.

Other land freight services that CAF offers include:

• Weekly Cargo Consolidation
• Temperature-Controlled
• Small Parcel