There is a huge site right off a railroad hub where there are hundreds of cargo containers. I assume they are to be loaded onto trucks. How do they sort them and how do they know which container goes on which truck?
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I retired from a Toyota plant working on a loading dock that handled North American parts. We had a gigantic Ryder cross dock on the property that the trucks came into from the suppliers. The trucks had parts for different sections of the plant so the cross dock repackaged them according to where they were going. The trucks that came to the dock I worked on had parts that we needed to build the cars in our department.
Occasionally we would have a parts shortage. My group leader could get on the computer and find out where every truck with part was located, from the factory to us. Some of those parts came to us once per day, some of them came up to 48 times per day. They could find every truck, wherever it was. They could find out how many parts were on each truck. They could get the cross dock to rush a trailer over if it was there, or call the supplier if it was in route. The supplier could contact the driver with instructions.
We also had a dock that dealt with overseas parts, it basically operated the same. Just a lot more parts in a lot more places, it took about 6 months for parts to come from Japan.
I tell you all this to say that logistically, every little detail in those containers you are seeing is mapped out and available to everyone involved. It looks like a dirty, jumbled mess, but everything going on there is planned to the last detail.
Every time a container moves, it’s location in the stacks is updated in a computerized tracking system. There’s a very coordinated system of stacking that is optimized to speed up loading of the incoming trucks, but containers go through a lot of steps before they get loaded on to trucks, too.
Before they get delivered to the rail hub (or port), a freight forwarder will send the container details through to the depots system. This will include information such as the container number, the seal number, the container weight, its first port of call, final destination, and the cargo category (e.g. general goods, or temperature controlled, or wine, or hazardous, etc).
The trucking company will also book their vehicle in with a timeslot, and will let them know which container they’re delivering and which one they’re collecting.
So then it’s a matter of knowing which stack to put the incoming container on, based on its weight, cargo, and routing, and getting the outbound container ready for pick up at the right time. Usually they’ll have several collection bays operating at once, so a bunch of trucks can get their container at more or less the same time.
Behind all of this is a whole pile of conplicated software that ensures your vessels and railways have safe separation of hazardous goods, have even weight distribution, and have the containers that are all getting off at the same location stored together so they don’t need to waste movements lifting them off and on.
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