Northeast Florida Drayage

Northeast Florida is its own freight market. Jacksonville is the third largest container port complex in the southeastern United States, with JAXPORT operating Blount Island, Dames Point, and Talleyrand terminals — and the Naval Station Mayport and Norfolk Southern's intermodal yards adding meaningful complexity. For an importer with a JAXPORT-routed booking, Ritehaul is not the right primary carrier — there are excellent local Jacksonville drayage operators who own the relationships at Blount Island and we will tell you that honestly. Where we add real value in Northeast Florida is on the South Florida origination side: containers landing at Port Miami or Port Everglades that need to move north to Duval, St. Johns, Nassau, or Clay County, and shipper export programs heading north through our FEC ramp at Hialeah for interchange in Jacksonville.

The decision between truck and rail for the South Florida to Jacksonville lane is honest math. Direct truck from Port Miami to a Jacksonville receiver runs roughly five-and-a-half to six hours up I-95 or the Florida Turnpike to I-95, depending on Daytona-area construction. FEC rail from our Hialeah ramp to JAXPORT is roughly 24 to 36 hours door to door once you account for cut-off, lift, transit, and ramp-out — meaningfully slower on the calendar but materially cheaper per container above the 350-mile mark and far more fuel-efficient. For high-volume programs running weekly volume north, the rail option almost always wins on cost; for time-critical single-container moves, the truck wins. We quote both because our customers deserve to see both.

On the truck side, Ritehaul covers Jacksonville, Jacksonville Beach, Orange Park, Middleburg, Green Cove Springs, Fernandina Beach, St. Augustine, and Palm Coast, with reach into Daytona Beach when freight makes sense to consolidate. Equipment is the standard South Florida fleet — 20-foot, 40-foot, and 45-foot ocean chassis, tri-axle overweight chassis, genset reefer chassis, and 53-foot dry vans for transloaded freight. On the rail side, we stage and deliver northbound ocean and domestic containers to the FEC Rail ramp ahead of cut-off with appointment confirmation back to the booking party, and we coordinate with reputable Jacksonville drayage partners on the destination ramp pull when the customer asks us to.