Ship your product most of the way by rail, then truck the last leg from a transload terminal near your customer. Enter origin, destination, commodity, and tonnage to find open-access transloaders in range and estimate what railing the long haul saves versus all-truck.
rail + transload ≈ (rail miles × rate) + transfer fee + (dray miles × truck rate)
Trucking is flexible but expensive per ton-mile; rail is cheap per ton-mile but ends at the tracks. The transload terminal bridges the two: you rail the bulk of the distance at rail economics, transfer to trucks near the destination, and dray the final miles to the customer. The longer the haul, the more the rail leg dominates and the bigger the saving.
The planner searches Rebulk's directory of 2,000+ US transload facilities for open-access operators handling your commodity within trucking range of your destination, then ranks them by estimated landed cost. Browse them all on the interactive map.
No public tool can quote a real rail rate, because they're privately contracted and depend on lane, commodity, volume, equipment, and fuel. This planner is a screening tool: it tells you whether a rail-and-transload move is worth pricing, and points you at the specific terminals and railroads to ask. Treat the dollar figures as directional, then confirm with a quote.
Rail moves bulk freight far cheaper per ton-mile than truck. Average Class-I rail revenue is about 4.4–4.6¢ per ton-mile (AAR / BTS, 2020–2022), while ATRI's 2024 data puts truck operating cost at $2.26 per mile — roughly 9¢ per ton-mile for a ~24-ton bulk load, and more once the carrier's margin is added. So railing the long haul and trucking only the final leg from a transload terminal near the destination is often far cheaper than all-truck. The planner rails from your origin to the best-placed open-access transloader, then trucks (drays) the last miles to your customer.
A transload facility transfers freight between rail and truck, so a shipper without their own rail siding can still use rail rates for the long haul. Routing through a transloader near the destination captures the per-ton-mile rail savings while a short truck dray covers the last leg to the end customer.
They are directional estimates, not quotes. Real rail rates are contract-based and vary by lane, commodity, volume, and fuel, so this tool multiplies an estimated rail distance (great-circle times a circuity factor) by a published industry-average per-ton-mile cost plus a transload handling fee. What is computed from real rail data is single-line vs. interchange — see the next question. You can override the rail rate, truck rate, and transload fee with your own contracted numbers. Use it to decide whether rail is worth pricing, then get quotes from the railroad and the transloader to confirm.
It is precomputed from the FRA / BTS North American Rail Network — the actual rail lines, with each segment's owning railroad and trackage rights. For every terminal we snap its location to the real rail geometry and determine which Class-I railroads can physically reach it on their own network (owned track or trackage rights), including terminals a Class-I reaches over a shortline it has rights on. When you pick your origin railroad, the planner flags each terminal as single-line (your railroad reaches it directly) or interchange (the car must hand off to another carrier). Checked against a set of known single-line rail lanes, this agrees ~98% of the time it flags single-line (it rarely over-claims) and catches ~82% of known lanes. It reflects the physical network, not commercial acceptance: the railroad still has to publish a rate and agree to the interchange, so confirm with the carrier. Rail and truck miles themselves are great-circle estimates.
A single-line move stays on one railroad from origin to the transload terminal, which is the cheapest and fastest case. If the terminal is served by a different railroad than your origin, the car must be interchanged between carriers, adding cost and typically a day or more of transit. Enter your origin railroad and the planner separates the two so you compare like for like.
From Rebulk's free directory of 2,000+ US rail transload facilities, filtered to open-access operators (transloaders, transloader-carriers, and rail-served 3PL warehouses) that can take third-party freight, geolocated so the planner can find the ones within trucking range of your destination. Captive shipper facilities are excluded because you can't route through them.
Rebulk builds the software transloaders run on: railcar tracking by spot and owner, BOL and scale-ticket automation, demurrage clocks, and live bulk inventory. If you operate a facility on this list, your directory listing is free; if you're a shipper, the planner connects you directly to the transloader without an intermediary.
Rebulk builds the software side of transload: railcar tracking, BOL and scale-ticket automation, demurrage clocks, and live bulk inventory, so every billable event lands on the record as it happens.
