San Diego to Las Vegas freight

San Diego freight that Las Vegas buys

A lot of what San Diego ships to Las Vegas was made in Tijuana. The factories across the border build televisions, medical devices, electronics and aerospace parts, the goods cross at Otay Mesa and are reloaded into domestic trailers in the warehouses there, and Las Vegas, a city of 2 million people with almost no manufacturing, is one of the closest big markets. San Diego adds its own output: medical and laboratory supplies for the Las Vegas hospitals, exhibits and equipment from the technology and defense companies that show at the conventions, hotel supplies and fixtures, and solar and building products on flatbeds for the construction that runs year round in the Las Vegas valley.

We put trucks on Interstate 15 into Las Vegas from the Los Angeles basin and from San Diego County whenever shippers there call us, and this lane rides on that same carrier base and dispatch desk. Inbound Las Vegas freight pays more than outbound because the truck often leaves Nevada light, and our dispatchers pair loads where they can to bring that cost down.

Interstate 15 north: two counties, two passes, one desert

From San Diego the truck heads north on Interstate 15 through Escondido, climbs the long Rainbow grade out of San Diego County and comes down into Temecula and Murrieta. Through the Inland Empire it can stay on Interstate 15 past Lake Elsinore and Corona to Ontario, or take Interstate 215 through Riverside and San Bernardino; the two rejoin at the foot of Cajon Pass. The climb to Cajon Summit, about 3,800 feet, is long and steady for a loaded truck, and then it is high desert: Victorville, Barstow, and 150 miles of the Mojave on Interstate 15 through Baker, with the thermometer at Baker telling drivers what they already know, up the Mountain Pass grade to about 4,700 feet, down to Primm at the Nevada line and on into Las Vegas.

Northbound trucks pass no inspection station; the California agricultural inspection at Yermo checks traffic coming the other way. Deliveries in Henderson leave the interstate before the Strip; deliveries in North Las Vegas pass through the city on Interstate 15 or around it on the beltway.

Heat on the Mojave, wind on Cajon, traffic on Friday

From June into September the Mojave between Barstow and Primm runs above 110 degrees, and the climb from Baker to Mountain Pass in the afternoon heat is the hardest hour of the trip for a tractor; carriers fuel at Barstow or Baker and run it early. Cajon Pass has high wind in any season and snow between December and March that can shut it down with little warning in a bad storm. The Rainbow grade heats brakes on the way down into Temecula for a southbound truck, and on the way up it is simply slow.

The lane’s own hazard is the Friday afternoon exodus to Las Vegas. Interstate 15 from the Inland Empire to Primm fills with Southern Californians on Friday afternoons and on the days before a holiday weekend, and a truck leaving San Diego after lunch on a Friday arrives hours later than one that left at dawn.

Same day or next day

Six hours of driving: a load picked up in Otay Mesa or Miramar in the morning can be at a Las Vegas dock the same afternoon; an afternoon pickup delivers the next morning. The two states share Pacific time, so a 2 PM appointment in Las Vegas is 2 PM in San Diego.

Vans for the cross dock freight, flatbeds for the builders

A standard dry van, 53 feet long, carries most of this lane. Televisions, medical devices and appliances reloaded at the Otay Mesa warehouses travel on pallets, and much of that freight is high value, so we send carriers whose drivers keep the seal intact and never leave the trailer parked alone at a Barstow truck stop. Convention freight is a case of its own: exhibit crates, display fixtures and rolled carpet move on a show’s calendar, and the Las Vegas convention halls take them through a marshaling yard and a timed unloading slot that the driver has to make or lose the day. A van fitted with load bars, straps and moving blankets suits that work best.

Flatbeds carry the building side of the lane: solar panels and racking, rebar, structural steel, roof trusses and precast pieces for the housing and resort projects that keep the Las Vegas valley busy. A load up to 8 feet 6 inches wide is legal in both states, and anything broader needs a permit from California and another from Nevada before it rolls. A heavy flatbed takes the Rainbow grade, Cajon Pass and the Mountain Pass climb slowly, and its driver walks the straps and tarps again at Barstow, where the desert wind starts to work on them.

Hotels are a large share of the Las Vegas receivers, and their freight splits by temperature. Refrigerated trailers are not part of our fleet, so the chilled and frozen food service orders go to a carrier that runs them; the dry side, linens, paper goods, cleaning supplies, kitchen equipment and furniture, rides with us in vans, and the dispatcher books the hotel’s receiving window before the truck leaves San Diego County.

Quoting a northbound load

Give the pickup area in San Diego County, since Otay Mesa, downtown and the coast are an hour apart, the commodity, pallet count or dimensions and weight, the pickup date and the Las Vegas delivery address and appointment, with the move in window for convention freight. Our own lane history and the morning diesel price set the range shown above the form for lanes we have priced; the firm price for your load comes back from the dispatcher through the quote form.

Each end has a page: truckload shipping in San Diego and truckload shipping in Las Vegas. The southbound trip is Las Vegas to San Diego freight, and our Phoenix lane out of San Diego is San Diego to Phoenix freight.