If you're moving freight through the Port of Savannah into or out of northeast Georgia, your drayage setup was probably built for a world that doesn't quite exist anymore. The Gainesville Inland Port just opened. Norfolk Southern is running five days a week. And a lot of shippers are going to keep doing things the old way for another year or two before they realize how much it's costing them.

Here are five signs you might be one of them. (But don't worry, we can help!)

1. Your containers sit at the Port of Savannah for more than two days after discharge.

Most shippers accept that a two-to-four day dwell is just how things go. It isn't. If your freight is routed through Savannah and moving by truck to or from northeast Georgia, every extra day the container sits is per diem, demurrage, or chassis charges accruing. Or it's freight you paid to move from Asia sitting in a yard because your carrier couldn't schedule a pickup. Both cost you.

2. You're using a different carrier at every port.

One carrier at Savannah. Another at Long Beach. A third in New York. A fourth for rail. Each one has a different billing process, different visibility, different SLA, and a different contact when something goes sideways. The "best of breed" approach sounds good in theory. In practice, it means you're the integration layer, and integration is expensive.

3. You don't know your per diem exposure by lane.

Most shippers can tell you their drayage spend. Very few can tell you what percentage of that spend is per diem, detention, demurrage, or chassis. If those line items are buried in your invoices and you're not tracking them separately, you're paying for problems you can't see and can't solve.

4. Your southeast drayage goes through Atlanta.

Every container moving by truck from Savannah to northeast Georgia runs up I-16 and then I-75 or I-85 around Atlanta. That's a 300-mile one-way trip through one of the most congested metros in the country. Drivers sit in traffic. Fuel burns. Hours of service get eaten up on highway, not at the dock. The rail option exists now. If you haven't run the math, you're leaving money on the table.

5. You find out about problems from your customer, not your carrier.

This one is the canary. If the first time you hear about a missed delivery is when your customer calls to ask where their freight is, your drayage carrier doesn't have a communication process. They have a hope-for-the-best process. Good carriers flag problems before they become problems. If that's not happening, you're one service failure away from a much bigger conversation.

If you checked three or more of these, the Gainesville Inland Port changes your math.

Direct Norfolk Southern rail from Savannah. Five days a week. ContainerPort Group is on-site at the rail ramp from day one. One carrier for imports and exports. One contact for the whole network.

Privately held since 1971. Three generations in. The kind of accountability you only get from a carrier that answers to customers, not shareholders.

If you want to see what the new routing looks like for your specific lanes, we'd welcome the conversation.