Track containers moving through Tacoma.

What Tacoma is for

Tacoma is the southern half of the Northwest Seaport Alliance, sharing management of container terminals with Seattle while remaining a separate port authority and a separate physical location.

How cargo leaves the gateway

Tacoma carries a substantial share of the Alliance's intermodal rail volume toward the Midwest, alongside domestic Alaska services that give it a cargo mix unlike the California gateways.

How containers actually move inland

West Coast gateways handle a large share of direct transpacific calls, and a significant portion of that volume leaves by rail rather than by local truck. That split matters for tracking, because a container routed to an inland point behaves nothing like one going to a local warehouse. The rail-bound box waits for assignment to a train, while the local box waits for a drayage appointment, and those two waits fail for entirely different reasons.

• Direct transpacific calls, so arrival events are usually clean to read
• A large share of volume departs by rail to inland points
• Local delivery depends on drayage appointments and chassis supply
• Rail-bound and truck-bound containers need different follow-up

Where free time is won or lost

The costly gap is between discharge and outgate. A container can be discharged, sitting in the yard, and still not be available for pickup, while free time counts down regardless. Teams that watch only vessel arrival tend to find out about the problem when the invoice arrives. Watching discharge and availability as separate events is what makes the exposure visible early enough to act on.

• Discharge typically starts the clock; availability decides when you can move
• Outgate confirms the box left, which is what actually stops demurrage
• Empty return closes detention exposure on the equipment