Any types of container shipments can be divided into steps that we discuss separately in the parts Shipment by truck, railway and by sea. But no one of them can deliver the container directly from the sender to the recipient, except only shipment by truck, but such shipments are rarely, because this is not the most profitable step, although sometimes this is the only solution. Thus likely that container transportation will combine several types of transport that is mixed container shipping. There are several combinations of multimodal shipment. Most commonly used scheme is when empty container is filed under loading at the client’s warehouse, and then it is transferred to other means of transport, railway or sea. Let’s consider the case when loaded container is given for the railway station. After the transfer and registration of documents container goes to the sea stage to the port of the country of destination or transit territory; on the way of the sea shipping container can follow the ports of transshipment, where it is reloaded onto another ship following in the right direction. After arrival to the port container is processed again and put into the queue to be loaded onto a train, where it moves to the end station, from which the loaded container is transported to the site of the recipient. The empty container is returned according to the instructions of the owner of the container. This is the example of a mixed container shipments called multimodal. Most of transcontinental shipments of cargoes in containers pass through these stages of transportation. All transportations from China, for example, are multimodal.

It is possible that the railway stage will not be applied to your carriage. It all depends on the distance from the port of final discharge point. The farther the warehouse of the recipient is from the port, there are more options of combination of transport. One more important point of multimodal container transportation is the place of release of container cargo. It can be the port, not necessarily the point of delivery of cargo. It depends on the ownership of the container. If the container is COC (belongs to the line), then it may be cheaper to release the container and to take it immediately back to the line, and the goods to deliver in the car or in the trailer. For saving money during transportation it is better to make the calculation of several variants of the return of the container. Usually the owner of the container allows you to pass the container in any place where he contracted for storage of containers in terminal or railway station. If you deliver the empty container at the convenient point for you, you will have to pay. The amount of payment is better to check beforehand. With the service from our company, customers can easily plan the container supply for loading in the convenient time and transportation with the involvement of various types of transport. Combined with the services of warehouse handling of cargo and containers, we organize mixed container service with any type of railway or sea container.