Free days at the terminal don't wait for you to find a warehouse. Our Medley dock sits about 25 minutes of drayage from PortMiami and 35 from Port Everglades — book the unload before the vessel berths, and your box comes off the terminal on its first available day. We devan 20–53 ft equipment, count every carton against the packing list, and route the cargo to racks, FBA or onward freight.
Miami's import geography is unusually compressed. PortMiami and Port Everglades discharge a few dozen highway minutes apart, MIA's cargo apron sits ten minutes from the warehouse district, and the district itself — Medley and Doral — is where the drayage runs end. Cargo from Latin America's short lanes and Asia's long ones funnels into the same few square miles.
That compression is an advantage only if your warehouse is inside it. An importer devanning upstate pays a linehaul before the goods do anything; an importer with no dock at all watches free time burn while calling around for space. Both problems are self-inflicted when the discharge port and the racks can share a short drayage run.
Our receiving practice is shaped around the port clock. Windows are confirmed before vessels berth, so truckers pull on first availability. Floor-loaded boxes are hand-unloaded and palletized; the empty goes back before per-diem stacks. And devanning doubles as evidence-gathering — seal photos, carton counts, damage documentation — because a container is also a claim waiting to be provable.
What happens next is up to the load: racks here, FBA prep on the same floor, or reloading onto outbound trucks. For how container cargo becomes Amazon-ready inventory anywhere in the country, see our national FBA container receiving guide — this page is about winning the Miami port-side game first.
| Port-clock pressure | How the Medley dock answers it |
|---|---|
| Terminal free time expiring | Unload windows confirmed pre-berthing; box pulls on first release day |
| Chassis & per-diem accrual | Scheduled devan, empty returned promptly after unload |
| No local dock for the trucker | Commercial receiving in the district where drayage runs terminate |
| Concealed shortage or damage | Seal photographed, cartons counted off, findings reported same day |
| Floor-loaded factory cartons | Hand-unload, SKU sort and palletizing included in the receive |
| Split-port programs | PortMiami and Port Everglades arrivals land at one dock, one process |
Send the ETA and container details before arrival; the dock window is locked in so drayage happens on release day, not after it.
Palletized freight comes off by the position; floor-loaded cartons are hand-stacked out, sorted by SKU and built onto pallets here.
Seal and door photos at opening, carton tallies against the packing list, and same-day photo evidence of anything crushed, wet or missing.
The unloaded box is ready for the trucker's return trip promptly, keeping chassis days and per-diem from quietly compounding.
Each receive splits per your plan: onto our racks (see FBA warehouse Miami), into FBA prep, or reloaded for onward trucking.
Short-transit palletized loads from the south, long-crossing floor loads from the east — the dock crew works both every week.
You send container number, ETA, port and load style; we confirm the dock slot and issue delivery instructions.
Your broker clears, the terminal releases, and the drayage carrier runs the short leg to Medley inside free time.
Seal photographed, cargo unloaded and counted, exceptions photographed — the receiving report reaches your inbox.
Goods split to racks, FBA prep or outbound trucks per your routing — and the empty is already back on a chassis.
Call today, not Thursday. With details in hand we can usually confirm a window fast enough for the trucker to pull inside free time — the difference between a routine receive and a demurrage invoice.
Drayage drivers move boxes, not boxes-of-boxes. Hand-unloading floor loads is standard work at our dock — cartons come out, get sorted by SKU and leave the day palletized.
Carrier reshuffles do this constantly in South Florida. Both ports dray to the same Medley door — your receiving process doesn't care which terminal the vessel picked.
By then nothing is claimable. When counting happens at devanning, the shortage is documented with photos the same day — while the carrier, the insurer and the supplier all still have to answer for it.
After your broker clears the box and the terminal releases it, a drayage carrier pulls it and drives it to our Medley dock — a run of roughly 25 minutes in normal traffic. Your forwarder usually books the trucker; if they don't cover the local leg, we can point you to drayage operators our import clients already use on this exact route. We coordinate the delivery window with whoever pulls the box.
It removes the two delays you can control. Free days at the terminal burn while a box waits for somewhere to go — our dock confirms unload windows fast, so the trucker can pull the container as soon as it releases. And because the empty goes back quickly after a scheduled unload, chassis and per-diem days stop accumulating. We can't speed up customs, but we make sure the warehouse is never the bottleneck.
Yes. Port Everglades sits about 35 minutes north of us, and plenty of South Florida import programs split volume between the two seaports depending on carrier and sailing. Both dray to the same Medley dock, and from your side the receiving process is identical — only the trucker's route changes.
Standard 20 ft and 40 ft boxes through 53 ft domestic equipment, palletized or floor-loaded. Floor-loaded cartons — the default from many Asian factories — are hand-unloaded, sorted by SKU and palletized here. Palletized loads come off faster and go straight to staging. LCL deliveries arriving on a local truck from a Miami CFS are received the same way.
Send the details ahead of vessel arrival — container number, ETA, size, load style and rough carton count — and we'll confirm a delivery window inside business hours, Monday to Friday 9:00 to 18:00. Booking before the ship berths is the single best move: it lets the trucker pull the box on its first available day instead of parking your freight in the free-time countdown.
Yes. When your shipment shares a container, the CFS strips the box and releases your pallets or cartons, which then truck over to us. We treat the delivery like any container arrival: count against your packing list, photograph any damage found, and route the goods to racks, FBA prep or onward shipping per your plan.
Constantly — that mix is Miami's signature. The city is the US gateway for Latin American trade, and Asian cargo reaches it by all-water services and transshipment. Practical differences show up at the dock: LatAm loads more often arrive palletized with shorter transits, while Asian factory loads skew floor-loaded and benefit most from a hard count and condition check after the long crossing.
We photograph the seal and the doors on opening, then count cartons against the packing list as they come off. Crushed, wet or short cargo is documented with photos the same day — evidence you can put in front of a carrier, insurer or supplier while claim windows are open. You get the receiving report before deciding how the load splits.
No — customs clearance belongs to your licensed broker or forwarder, and we're not your Importer of Record. Most of our import clients ship DDP so the box arrives fully cleared. What we do own is everything after release: the delivery window, the unload, the count, and the routing of your goods.
Form or phone, with size (20–53 ft), floor-loaded or palletized, estimated cartons, which port it arrives through, and what happens after unload — storage here, FBA, or onward trucking. Per-container receiving pricing and dock instructions for your forwarder come back within one business day.
Container size, ETA, arrival port, load style, carton estimate, and where the cargo goes after devanning — that's all we need. Receiving pricing and dock instructions for your forwarder come back within one business day.
