Who ships steel coil, and when do they book?

Commodity playbook

Who ships steel coil

Head offices of mills and service centres. Each runs many locations, and the processing site is where the coil actually loads.

Ask for the traffic manager at the service centre first. Mills often move on rail and long-term contracts; service centres run truck constantly, in shorter lanes, with more urgency and far more willingness to try a new carrier. They are also the ones who will tell you honestly whether your equipment and securement are up to it.

Where it hauls

Three layers. Mills roll the coil, concentrated in the industrial midwest around Indiana and Ohio, in the south from Alabama through Arkansas to Texas, and on the Great Lakes. Service centres buy coil, slit and cut it and resell it in usable form; there are hundreds of them and they sit close to manufacturing clusters. End users are stampers, fabricators and appliance and auto plants. The mill-to-service-centre and service-centre-to-user legs are both real truckload freight. The companies to know:

How to open

Lead with securement, not rate. Coil racks, correctly rated chains, timbers and the knowledge to place them are the qualification, and a shipper who has had a coil shift knows exactly what it costs.

Qualifying questions

• Eye to the sky or eye to the side? It decides the securement entirely. Suspended-eye coils need a coil rack or proper cradling and chains through the eye; eye-to-the-side needs different blocking. Get it before you dispatch, not at the dock.
• What does each coil weigh? Coils commonly run 10 to 25 tons apiece, so one or two make a load. Weight and placement decide axle distribution. Get individual coil weights, not just the total.
• Do you have the right chains and timbers? Coil securement is regulated and specific: rated chains, correct number, timbers or a rack. This is the question the shipper is really asking you, so answer it before they have to.
• Is it tarped? Cold rolled and coated coil rusts and stains and must stay dry; hot rolled often runs open. Confirm which, because tarping several 20-ton coils is real work.
• Mill, service centre, or end user? Mill outbound is long and often rail-competitive. Service centre freight is shorter and more frequent. End user delivery runs to a production schedule. Establish which leg you are quoting.

When to call

December and January, as annual contracts are placed for the new year. The freight itself runs every week regardless, but the contracted portion is decided at the turn of the year. Service centres also add capacity through the year as their own order books move, which makes a mid-year call worth making.