Transit
Door-ready adds half the gap between departures — the average wait if your cargo becomes ready at a random moment. On a 42-a-week service that is 0.1 days, and it is the figure a road-versus-rail comparison usually leaves out.
Legs and handovers
A single through leg — no gauge break and no operator handover en route.
- 1 Los Angeles ICTF → Chicago CorwithBNSF · Standard (1435 mm) · 3,300 km · 4 d
Track gauge and borders
The spacing between the rails — whether the wheels can run through, or the load has to change trains.
- Countries crossed
- US
- Gauge changes
- None — through running
- Origin gauge
- Standard (1435 mm)
- Destination gauge
- Standard (1435 mm)
Loading gauge clearance
The height and width of tunnels and bridges — whether the load fits through. A different constraint from track gauge above: this corridor can have no gauge break at all and still refuse a high-cube container.
Set by US, the narrowest network on the route. One restrictive tunnel anywhere caps the whole journey regardless of how generous the rest is. The double-stack envelope. Two high-cube containers only clear it on a well wagon, whose deck sits far below a normal wagon floor — that is the whole point of the design.
- 40ft standard (8'6") on a container flat
- Clears +2401 mm
- High-cube (9'6") on a container flat
- Clears +2096 mm
- Swap body on a container flat
- Clears +2322 mm
- P400 semi-trailer on a pocket wagon
- Clears +1877 mm
Profiles are the published maxima for each network's core freight routes. Individual lines differ in both directions, so a load within 50 mm of the limit needs the operator to confirm the specific path. Compare wagon deck heights →
Emissions
GLEC v3 planning estimate — not a regulatory declaration. Model your own payload with the transit calculator.
The transcontinental double-stack corridor — the highest-volume intermodal relation in North America.