Written and reviewed by Josh Kohanim, Esq., California Bar No. 328609 · Reviewed
In this guide
These claims arise when a container truck strikes someone in the harbor area, on the 710 or the 110, or on the surface streets around Wilmington, San Pedro, Carson and Long Beach. Two facts make them different: weight and sealed cargo. The whole claim from start to finish is on our Los Angeles truck accident lawyer page.
What drayage is and who is involved
Drayage is the short truck move that takes an ocean container between a marine terminal and a nearby warehouse, railyard or customer. The container sits on a chassis, the wheeled steel frame that turns a box into a trailer, and the chassis is usually leased from a pool rather than owned by the trucking company. The trucking company holding the operating authority, the federal license to haul for hire, is the licensed motor carrier. The company that owns the goods inside is the beneficial cargo owner.
None of those roles has to be the same business, and often no two of them are. That is the structural fact of a port case. The driver may own the tractor and lease it to a carrier that has three trucks. The box belongs to an importer in another state, the chassis is maintained by a pool operator, and the terminal is run by a global shipping line.
- 10.2 millionTEUs (twenty-foot container units) handled in calendar year 2025Port of Los Angeles
- 25cargo terminals, seven of them container terminalsPort of Los Angeles
- 7,500acres, with 43 miles of waterfrontPort of Los Angeles
- 26 yearsas the number one container port in the Western HemispherePort of Los Angeles
Those figures come from the Port of Los Angeles facts and figures, which credits itself as the source and reports 2025 calendar year volume. The Port also puts its 2025 market share at 17 percent of all containerized waterborne trade handled by United States seaports, and the San Pedro Bay complex of Los Angeles and Long Beach at about 31 percent. Every one of those boxes that does not leave by rail leaves on a truck.
Why port trucks weigh so much
The California Transportation Commission assessed the state's priority freight corridors under Senate Bill 671 in 2023. It treated Interstate 710 as the segment connecting Interstate 5 to the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. It treated Interstate 110 as the segment connecting Interstate 10 to the same ports, with State Route 47 linking both.
Around the terminals, the streets carry a load the rest of the county does not. The Port of Los Angeles publishes an overweight container corridor of designated City of Los Angeles, City of Long Beach and state routes. On those routes, permits allow the combined gross weight of truck, chassis, container and contents to reach 95,000 pounds with the proper equipment. Permits come from each jurisdiction the route crosses, and they do not travel with the load once it leaves the corridor. Mass is what turns a low speed mistake near a terminal gate into a serious injury.
| Role | What it does | What it may answer for |
|---|---|---|
| Marine terminal operator | Runs the terminal, loads the box onto the chassis | Loading, yard conditions, equipment |
| Licensed motor carrier | Holds the operating authority and the port registration | The driver, hiring, dispatch |
| Owner-operator | Owns the tractor and leases it to the carrier | Driving, the pre-trip inspection |
| Chassis provider | Supplies and maintains the chassis from a pool | Chassis tires, brakes and lights |
| Beneficial cargo owner or shipper | Owns the goods and packed the container | Weight and packing inside a sealed box |
Who answers for the load
A container arrives at the terminal sealed. The driver hooks it, and in most cases never sees what is inside or how it was stacked. That single fact rearranges the fault analysis. 49 CFR 392.9 requires the driver to confirm the cargo is distributed and secured before driving, to inspect the load again within the first 50 miles, and to re-examine it at intervals after that. Then it says the rule does not apply to the driver of a sealed vehicle who has been ordered not to open it.
When a box is loaded to one end, or declared at a weight it does not hold, the party that packed and sealed it is the one exposed to liability. Proving it takes the seal record, the terminal's weight ticket, the bill of lading and the packing list, and every one of those sits with a different company. A shifting load inside a sealed container is a claim against the shipper as much as the carrier.
The chassis is a separate question. Tires, brake lines and lighting on a pooled chassis are maintained by the pool operator, not by the carrier whose tractor pulled it that morning. When the roadside inspection or the post-crash download points at the trailer rather than the tractor, the maintenance file for that chassis unit number becomes the document that matters.
Where a port case differs
- Port property and Harbor Department vehicles. The Port of Los Angeles is a department of the City of Los Angeles. If a city vehicle or a condition of Port property is part of the crash, a written claim is due within six months under Government Code section 911.2, not two years.
- Inside the terminal gate. A collision in the yard happens on private property, so there may be no CHP report at all. The terminal's own incident file, the gate camera and the equipment interchange receipt, the gate document recording the container and chassis condition, become the record instead.
- An empty or bobtail move. When the tractor is running with no box or an empty one, there is no cargo interest and no shipper to add. The case narrows back to the driver, the carrier and the chassis.
- A three-truck carrier at the federal minimum. Much of the drayage fleet is small. If the carrier holds only the $750,000 federal minimum, the value of the case depends on finding the other parties in the move rather than on the carrier alone.
Truck collision, concussion
Sideswiped on the freeway by a semi-truck. Settled on the eve of trial.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Every case depends on its own facts, injuries, and insurance coverage. Amounts shown are gross recoveries before attorney's fees, costs, and medical liens.
What a port truck case takes
It takes the paperwork of the move, and it takes it early. The container number, the chassis unit number, the terminal, the bill of lading and the seal record identify every company that touched the load before the truck reached the freeway. Drayage trucks entering Port of Los Angeles terminals must comply with the state drayage rules and with the Port's own tariff, its published rules, so the truck that hit you is registered somewhere, to someone.
That is a records race, and the records belong to the companies being sued. If a container truck hurt you or someone in your family, call before the seal record and the terminal video age out, and there is no fee unless we recover. To see how the fault question is framed across all of these parties, read who is liable in a truck accident. If the driver had been running long hours before the crash, read hours of service and driver fatigue. An impact at container weight tends to produce the injuries our Los Angeles catastrophic injury lawyer page covers.