Inland gateway · Dallas–Fort Worth · ramp rates read 07/28–07/29/2026

Dallas is fed by two ports the tariffs price $25 apart, and the gateway decides who bills you as well as how much

⚑ The short answer

Dallas is fed by two ports in our map and only one of them is priced by a carrier. Long Beach carries fourteen tariff lines with a median of $280 for the first paid day; Houston carries eight tariff lines with a median of $270, and levies its own charge of $45 per unit per day from the eighth day after free time expires on top. The gateway decides which party bills you, not only how much.
Dallas-bound containers do not arrive in Dallas. A box discharged at Long Beach or Houston is moved inland and grounded at a rail ramp, and this page names no ramp for this market because the capture names none: what it names instead is a metroplex under three spellings, an airport abbreviation and a forwarder's service product.
Intermodal ramps charge less per day than the port and forgive less time, and the ramp rate is the same whichever gateway you use — $160 to $190 for the first paid day across the four tariffs that publish ramp rates, against the grounding day plus two working days where the port gives four. The gateway choice moves the port line and nothing else we can price.
US container ports are not what these results price. The one figure the capture supplies is US$246.68 per 100 kilograms, a unit no container moves in, while the refinements ask for air freight and this market's own abbreviation is also an airport code. Port of entry is a customs code, the questions ask for Dallas's directly, and the code lists are unread, so none is published here.

Two gateways billed by different partiesThe only market in this catalogue fed through the GulfNo carrier tariff names this city

The two legs of a Dallas import, and which party prices each

A Dallas import has two legs, and the first one decides something no other market in this catalogue has to think about: which party bills you for time. One of this market’s two gateways levies a charge of its own; the other does not, as far as we have read.

How this page is built · what we are paid

No cost figure on this page is a Dallas figure. The tariffs price port groups and ramp classes, and not one of those lines names this market.
The two gateway figures below are not two values of one thing: one is a carrier’s median across eight lines, the other is a port authority’s daily charge starting on day eight. Different parties, different documents, different clocks.
Ramp rates are national and identical whichever gateway you use.
This market is fed through the Gulf in our own routing map, which is our decision rather than a fact about railroads.
No carrier, port or railroad has paid to appear here, and no link on this site is a referral link.

The two gateways this market draws from. The left column is a port authority’s charge and the right is a carrier’s median — read them as different instruments.
Gateway	Coast	Carrier demurrage, first paid day	A charge levied by the port itself	Free time
Houston	Gulf	not publishedthe tariffs name this port	$45 per unit per day from day 8 after free time expiresPort Houston · read 07/26/2026	from a group line that never names the port
Long Beach	West	$280 median · $165–$370 across fourteen linesnine US import demurrage tariffs · read 07/28–08/01/2026	found, not reada reported 4.77% local fee increase, unconfirmed against the port — gap J	four days at most carriers, counted from discharge
Ocean transit time	not applicable	not checked yetnot read at any gateway, and it will not be estimated	not applicable	not applicable
Rail miles to the district	not applicable	not checked yeta mile count recalled from memory is not a measurement	not applicable	not applicable

What an empty-looking cell means: not published — the source publishes no figure here found, not read — the document exists and is identified, but we have not opened it 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, in full. Both gateways are profiled with their own stacks: what it costs to land a box at houston and what it costs to land a box at long beach.

A CBP port of entry is a code, not a berth, and the questions ask for Dallas's by name

Dallas holds a Customs and Border Protection port of entry and no salt water. A port of entry is an administrative location with a code; clearance can happen here while the container was discharged a thousand miles away, and the demurrage clock belongs to the place it was discharged.

We publish the distinction and none of the codes: 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.

What these results name for Dallas, and why none of it is a place a box lands

This is the third gateway in this catalogue and the third answer to the ramp question. Chicago has four ramps named in the results; Atlanta has inland facilities in other counties; for Dallas the captures name no intermodal facility at all.

What the results name for this market.
Facility	What the capture carries	Filing code
not checked yetno intermodal facility is named in anything we captured	an ocean import service marketed to this market, the metroplex under three spellings, and a supply-chain forum thread	not publishedgap I

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

No ramp name, and no filing code either. Ask your carrier which ramp the box is grounded at, by name — it is the field that decides the road leg you are about to pay for, and neither we nor these results can give it to you. No FIRMS or CBP code appears here at all: a code goes on a filing, a wrong one costs more than a missing one, and the code lists are unread.

What each gateway costs per day, and which of the two figures is a carrier's

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

Ramp-class rates against the port-group medians they sit beside. Four of the nine tariffs publish ramp rates separately.
Carrier	Ramp first paid day	Ramp tiers	Its own port rate
CMA CGM	$160	160 / 210 / 260	$275 in California
Hapag-Lloyd	$160	160 / 220 / 250	$270 California base
ZIM	$165	165 / 200 / 230	$250 standard ports
Maersk	$190	190 / 250 / 280	$300 standard ports
The ramp median is $163, below every port-group median we read. These are national ramp-class rates: not one of them names this market, and none of them changes with the gateway you choose.

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

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.

Six meters can run on a Houston-routed box and five on a Long Beach one

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. 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.

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 a third party that is neither

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 Dallas gateway quote has to list

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 largest numbers on this route are missing for four different reasons

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 vendor ranges that circulate have no sample behind them. 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.

And one figure specific to this market is worth naming rather than using: the only price the capture supplies for this route is quoted per 100 kilograms. No container moves in that unit. It is reported here as an observation about the results and adopted as nothing.

What an inland port can and cannot do for Dallas cargo

An inland port is a real thing and it is not a substitute for a seaport. For Dallas cargo:

It can clear customs, because port-of-entry status is administrative and needs no water.
It can store, transload and distribute — and hold your box past a ramp’s free time on its own terms.
It cannot receive a vessel, cancel the ocean leg, or change the carrier’s tariff.
And on the Houston routing there is a second biller for time: the port authority itself, from day eight. That is a charge no inland facility can affect.

What the market publishes when asked which port serves Dallas

Asked which port a Dallas container should come through, the market answers with the one cost line the gateway barely moves — and with a different service entirely. These are our own counts.

What the results for the Dallas gateway queries actually contain, captured 07/26/2026.
What we measured	Value
What the results answer the routing question with	ocean freight — sea freight rates, container rates from Shanghai, shipping costs from China. The one line the gateway choice barely moves.
The only price figure in the capture	quoted per 100 kilograms — a unit no container moves in
Two more signals of a different service	the related set refines with air freight, and this market’s own abbreviation in the capture is also an airport code
What the questions mean by the word “tariff”	import duty — the most dangerous homonym on this site, because it is the word every page here uses in a specific technical sense
Intermodal facilities named	none
Other services arriving on the query	an export question about a container to the Philippines, a parcel question about a 50-pound package, and courier refinements

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

Tariff on this site always means a carrier’s or a port’s published schedule of charges — never import duty. Both meanings are legitimate and only one of them is what any figure here refers to.

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

The Dallas 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 unread rather than empty.

Three things the register does not tell you, and on this market a fourth. 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. On a Houston routing add a fourth: it says nothing about the port authority that levies the charge on day eight.

Questions about importing to Dallas from China

Container to Dallas from China: which port?

Two in our map, and they are billed differently. Long Beach is priced by carriers at a median of $280 for the first paid day across eight tariff lines; Houston is named in none of the nine tariffs and instead charges $45 per unit per day from the eighth day after free time expires.

What is the closest port to Dallas, Texas?

Not a question we can answer with a figure. No distance between a port and an inland market is published anywhere on this site, and the two gateways our map routes here are Houston and Long Beach.

What port is in Dallas, Texas?

None on water. A box for this market is discharged at a seaport and moved inland to a rail ramp, and the capture behind this page names no ramp for this market — it names the metroplex, a service product and a forum thread instead.

What is the port code for Dallas Texas?

Not published here. Port-of-entry and FIRMS code lists come from CBP and we have not read them. A code is needed for a filing, which is exactly why giving one from memory would be worse than giving none.

Do I pay tariffs if I order from China?

A different subject from this page and one we do not cover. Everywhere else on this site the word tariff means a carrier's published demurrage schedule, not an import duty, and the two share nothing but the word.

How much does it cost to ship a 40ft container from China?

Ocean freight is set by the lane and the contract rather than by the gateway, and it is the line these results mostly answer with. What the gateway does move is the port charge, the ramp charge and the road leg, and of those we can price the first at one gateway only.

Do I get the same free time at a Dallas 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, so the vessel arrival date will not give it to you.

How long does it take to ship from China to Dallas?

No transit time has been read at any gateway on this site, by sea or by rail. The columns for it are hatched rather than estimated, and a routing decision made on an invented transit time is worse than one made without it.

Is the price per 100 kg in these results useful?

Not for a container. That unit belongs to a different service, and it is the only price figure this capture supplies for the route — which is itself worth knowing before comparing quotes.