Inland gateway · Chicago district · ramp rates read 07/28–07/29/2026

Chicago is not priced by any carrier tariff, and the ramp rate that is runs about 40% below the port rate

⚑ The short answer

Chicago is not a port and no carrier tariff prices it. The nine import tariffs we read price ramps as a class, not this city, so every cost figure on this page is a ramp-class figure rather than a Chicago figure. Saying otherwise would attach a number to a place the source never named.
Chicago-bound containers do not arrive in Chicago. They are grounded at one of the district's intermodal ramps — BNSF Logistics Park Chicago, Union Pacific Global IV at Joliet, CSX Bedford Park or a Norfolk Southern facility — and the ramp your service uses decides your clock, your address and your drayage leg.
Intermodal ramps charge less per day than ports and forgive less time. Across the four tariffs that publish ramp rates, the first paid day runs $160 to $190 against port medians of $260 to $360 — but Hapag-Lloyd gives ramps the grounding day plus two working days where the port gets four, and CMA CGM gives rail three days against four.
Port of entry is a customs code and not a berth, and Chicago holds one without touching salt water. The drayage leg from the ramp to your door is the largest unpriced piece of this route: no comparable rate set exists in a dated source with a sample size, and rail line-haul moves on contract rates that are not published at all.

No carrier tariff names this cityRamp rates run about 40% below port ratesAnd the ramp forgives fewer days

The two legs of a Chicago import, and what is priced on each

A Chicago import has two legs and they are priced by different documents — where they are priced at all. The ocean leg ends at a port of discharge on a coast; the inland leg ends at a rail ramp in the Chicago district, and the box is your responsibility from the moment it is grounded there.

How this page is built · what we are paid

No cost figure on this page is a Chicago figure. The ten tariffs price rail ramps as a class, and not one of those lines names this city. Ramp-class rates are compared with port-group medians, and every caption says which is which.
Ramp rates are national. Nothing here means that a given carrier charges a given number at a given Joliet terminal.
The trade ships whole: the ramp charges less per day and forgives fewer days, and both halves come from the same document for each carrier.
Ramp addresses below come from the search results rather than from a railroad’s own page, and they carry that status. No filing code is published at all.
No carrier, railroad or terminal has paid to appear here, and no link on this site is a referral link.

The two legs, and what each one is priced by. The port column is by **port group** and the ramp column is by **ramp class** — no cell here is a Chicago cell.
Leg	Where it ends	What prices it	First paid day	Free time
Ocean leg	a port of discharge — Los Angeles, Long Beach, Savannah, New York	the carrier’s US import tariff, by port group	$257–$360 across the ports we readnine US import demurrage tariffs · read 07/28–08/01/2026	four days at most carriers, five at COSCO, counted from discharge
Inland leg	a rail ramp in the Chicago district	the same tariffs, by ramp class	$160–$190 · median $163four of the nine tariffs · read 07/28–07/29/2026	fewer days, and counted from grounding rather than from discharge
Ocean transit time	not applicable	nobody publishes it comparably	not checked yetnot read at any gateway — and it will not be estimated	not applicable
Rail miles	not applicable	not read	not checked yeta mile count recalled from memory is not a measurement	not applicable

What an empty-looking cell means: not applicable — the measure does not apply to this row not checked yet — we have not read the document yet

Which port those figures belong to is your choice, and it has its own page. The four ports that most often carry Chicago cargo are profiled with their own stacks: what it costs to land a box at long beach, what it costs to land a box at los angeles, what it costs to land a box at savannah and what it costs to land a box at new york new jersey.

A CBP port of entry is a code, not a berth, and Chicago holds one

Chicago holds a Customs and Border Protection port of entry, and it has no salt water. That is not a contradiction: a port of entry is an administrative location with a code, and clearance can happen here while the container was discharged two thousand miles away.

Two different fields, two different code systems, and confusing them is the single most common error in inland import paperwork. The demurrage clock belongs to the port of discharge; the entry belongs to the port of entry. We publish the distinction and none of the codes, because the code lists are unread and a wrong code on a filing costs more than a missing one.

The four fields that all say “port”, and which one the money is counted from: why the port of entry is not the berth.

The four Chicago-district ramps your box actually lands at

A Chicago import does not arrive in Chicago. It arrives at one of four rail ramps in the district, most of them well outside the city, and which one decides the road leg you are about to pay for.

The four ramps that serve this market. Addresses come from the search results, not from a railroad’s own page.
Ramp	Railroad	Where it is	Filing code
UP Global IV	Union Pacific	3000 CenterPoint Way, Joliet, ILsearch results · seen 07/26/2026	not publishedgap I — see the note below
BNSF Logistics Park Chicago	BNSF	the Elwood and Joliet districtsearch results · seen 07/26/2026	not publishedgap I
CSX Bedford Park	CSX	Bedford Parksearch results · seen 07/26/2026	not publishedgap I
Norfolk Southern	Norfolk Southern	not checked yetthe Chicago district; no address established	not publishedgap I

What an empty-looking cell means: not published — the source publishes no figure here not checked yet — we have not read the document yet

Two things about this table, and the second one is deliberate. The addresses are what the search results agree on; no railroad terminal page has been opened, so they carry consensus status rather than a read source. And no FIRMS or CBP code appears for any of these ramps at all. A code goes on a filing, a wrong code costs more than a missing one, and the code lists are unread — that is gap I, and it is absolute here rather than hatched.

What the inland leg costs per day, and what it costs in forgiveness

The inland leg makes a trade, and both halves of it come from the same document for each carrier: it charges less per day and forgives fewer days.

Ramp-class rates against the port medians they are set beside. Four of the nine tariffs publish ramp rates separately.
Carrier	Ramp first paid day	Ramp tiers	Its own port rate	Difference
CMA CGM	$160	160 / 210 / 260	$275 in California	−$115 · about 42%
Hapag-Lloyd	$160	160 / 220 / 250	$270 California base	−$110 · about 41%
ZIM	$165	165 / 200 / 230	$250 standard ports	−$85 · about 34%
Maersk	$190	190 / 250 / 280	$300 standard ports	−$110 · about 37%
The ramp median is $163 — below every port-group median we read, which run from $260 to $360. These are national ramp-class rates: not one of them is named Chicago, and none of them means that a given carrier charges that number at a given Joliet terminal.

nine US import demurrage tariffs · read 07/28–08/01/2026

What this block cannot compute. The template asks what an extra week of ocean buys, and weeks cannot be computed here: no transit time is read by sea or by rail. So the block counts what was actually read — the daily rate and the number of forgiven days — and leaves the time column named rather than estimated.

Whether the coast itself decides anything, measured rather than assumed: how east coast and west coast actually differ. What happens when the vessel skips the port your box was routed to: when the ship skips your port. And the rule any invoice for these days answers to: the federal rules your invoice has to meet.

Where a cheap gateway turns expensive: the ramp clock is shorter

This is where a cheap gateway turns expensive. The ramp clock is shorter than the port clock, and it starts from a different event.

The same two carriers, port against ramp, from the same documents.
Carrier	At the port	At the ramp	Read
Hapag-Lloyd	the day of discharge plus four working days	the grounding day plus two working days	read 07/28/2026
CMA CGM	four working days	three days	read 07/28/2026

The most practically useful line on this page. At the ramp the count starts from grounding, not from discharge off the vessel. That is a different event, in a different place, on a different day — and a reader holding the vessel arrival date cannot derive the ramp start from it. Ask for the grounding date, not the arrival date.

How the clock works on the ocean side, and how to keep it from starting: how the demurrage clock runs.

FMC on the water, FMCSA on the road, and no document covers both

Two federal regulators cover a Chicago import and neither covers the whole of it.

The ocean leg is licensed by the Federal Maritime Commission. Its register of ocean transportation intermediaries carries the licence number, the surety and the bond for each organisation, and it is public.
The road leg is regulated by a different federal agency altogether, and nothing in the maritime register describes it.
No single document covers your whole route. A genuine, current licence can cover a leg the company does not actually run — that is a difference in regulated subject, not a fraud.
So the question to ask is not whether a licence exists. It is which leg is covered by whose licence, and who is doing the other one.

What a comparable Chicago gateway quote has to list

A Chicago gateway quote is comparable with another one only if it lists six things. Most list four.

Which port of discharge, by name — the ocean rate and the clock belong to it.
Which ramp, by name, if the box moves inland under the carrier’s bill. A district is not a ramp.
Free time at the ramp, and the event it counts from. This is the line most often missing, and without it two quotes showing the same total are not comparable.
The daily rate after that free time, in tiers, because every tariff steps up.
Who does the road leg from the ramp, and under whose authority.
What is not included — chassis, storage at the ramp, and anything billed by a party other than the one quoting you.

The two largest numbers on this route are not published anywhere

The two largest numbers on this route are not published anywhere — for two different reasons. Drayage from the ramp to your door is our gap: no comparable rate set exists from a single dated source with a stated sample size, and the $400–$900 vendor range that circulates has no sample behind it. That is gap F. Rail line-haul is different in kind: it moves on contract rates rather than on a published tariff, so there is no document we failed to read. Conflating the two would accuse a source of secrecy where there is none, and the practical consequence is the same either way — the two biggest lines of an inland move are quoted to you rather than published.

How every figure on this site is sourced and what each status permits: how every figure here is sourced.

What an inland port can and cannot do for Chicago cargo

An inland port is a real thing and it is not a substitute for a seaport. What it can do for Chicago cargo, and what it cannot:

It can clear customs, because port-of-entry status is administrative and does not need water.
It can store, transload and distribute — and it can hold your box past the ramp’s free time on its own terms.
It cannot receive a vessel. Choosing an inland terminal changes nothing on the ocean side.
It cannot cancel the ocean leg or change the carrier’s tariff. The demurrage clock at the port of discharge runs regardless.
And it is not the Port of Chicago. That is a lake port on Lake Michigan, unrelated to container imports arriving from Asia.

What the market publishes when asked which port serves Chicago

The market publishes where a ramp is and not what it costs to route through one. These are our own counts across the eight queries this page answers.

What the results for the Chicago gateway queries actually contain, captured 07/26/2026.
What we measured	Value
Queries returning a local pack	three of eight — the three naming a specific ramp
Queries returning a knowledge panel	three of eight
What the related searches ask for	tracking, yard maps, terminal locations, addresses — operational, not comparative
What the questions above the results ask	about Chinese ports, about courier transit times and about a parcel suspension — the US gateway question is a minority of this result set
Where the comparative answer actually sits	a forum thread

our own capture of the eight Chicago gateway queries, Google US, 07/26/2026

A market that publishes addresses and not rates is not hiding the rates. They are quoted rather than published, and the difference matters when you are trying to compare two quotes.

Licensed intermediaries for the Chicago market, and what the register does not say

The Chicago metro has not been counted in the Federal Maritime Commission’s register of ocean transportation intermediaries. Two port areas have — 95 organisations at Los Angeles and Long Beach, eleven at Savannah — and this one is simply unread rather than empty.

Three things the register does not tell you, and the third matters most here. It carries an organisation’s address rather than the routes it works. Absence from it is not a finding about a company. And it does not cover the road leg at all — which, for an inland gateway, is most of what you are buying.

Questions about importing to Chicago from China

Best port to import to Chicago from China?

No tariff assigns a rate to Chicago, so the question resolves to the ramp and its clock. Port medians for the four gateways are published here; the drayage leg that would complete the comparison does not exist in comparable form.

Which port should I ship to for Chicago?

Four gateways are compared on the one cost line we read in full. Two columns of that comparison — ocean transit and rail miles — are unread and are shown hatched rather than estimated.

Where does my Chicago container actually arrive?

At one of the district ramps: Union Pacific Global IV at Joliet, BNSF Logistics Park Chicago, CSX Bedford Park or a Norfolk Southern facility. Not in Chicago, and which one decides your clock and your drayage.

Is Chicago a port of entry?

Yes, and without salt water. A port of entry is a customs code rather than a berth, so clearance can happen here while the box came off a vessel two thousand miles away.

How much is demurrage at a rail ramp?

$160 to $190 for the first paid day across the four tariffs that publish ramp rates separately, which is below every port median we read. The tiers rise from there and differ by carrier.

Do I get the same free time at a Chicago ramp as at the port?

No, less. Hapag-Lloyd gives ramps the grounding day plus two working days against four at the port, and CMA CGM gives rail three days against four. The count also starts from grounding rather than from discharge.

How much does drayage from the ramp cost?

No comparable rate set exists in a single dated source with a sample size. Vendor ranges are shown as ranges and never averaged into a stack, because a range without a denominator cannot be compared with a tariff.

What is the FIRMS code for my ramp?

Not published here: the code lists are unread. A code is needed for filing, which is precisely why giving one from memory would be worse than giving none.