Freight shipping in Commerce

Commerce as a freight market

Commerce is a small city with a very large freight footprint. It sits about seven miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles, where Interstate 5 cuts through on its way to Orange County, Interstate 710 runs along the west side down to the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, and State Route 60 passes just to the north. Two major rail terminals are here, a large BNSF intermodal yard and a Union Pacific yard, both moving containers and trailers between the ports and the rest of the country. Around them stand the warehouses, transload buildings and distribution centers that make Commerce and its neighbors one of the densest industrial districts in the West.

Vernon, next door, is almost entirely industrial, a center for food processing, meat packing and apparel, and Montebello, Bell, Maywood, Huntington Park, South Gate, Downey and Pico Rivera fill in the map with more plants, distributors and importers. The freight is a mix of import goods coming off the trains and out of the ports, food and beverage, apparel and furniture, and the supplies that keep a crowded urban economy running.

What our dispatch records show in Commerce

Commerce is mostly a receiving district for us. Through the end of September 2026, our dispatch records show more of our loads ending in Commerce and the cities around it than starting there, on dry vans, flatbeds and box trucks, mostly hauled by partner carriers. Loads came in from Las Vegas and from Phoenix, some of them on our own trucks, and from farther north, out of the Bay Area, the San Joaquin Valley and the Salinas and Central Coast region, with partner carriers. Going out, the lane that repeats is Commerce to the Las Vegas area, on dry vans, box trucks and flatbeds. Drop trailers are rare here, though we have placed them.

Across the Los Angeles market we run freight regularly, on lanes linking the basin with Las Vegas, Phoenix, El Paso, Salinas and the San Joaquin Valley, and Commerce sits in the middle of that work. The dispatcher who takes your call books the truck and stays with the load until the delivery receipt is signed.

Local moves and long hauls from Commerce

Commerce is about 7 miles from central Los Angeles, so a move within the basin is a same day job and the clock is set by traffic, not distance. The Inland Empire is about 36 miles east on State Route 60, roughly an hour when the freeway is clear, and the ports are about 20 miles south on Interstate 710. Our office in Covina is about 20 miles away, and our dispatchers know these freeways at every hour.

For longer runs, Commerce sits at the head of the western interstates. Las Vegas is about 270 miles out by Interstate 10 and Interstate 15, Phoenix about 370 miles east on Interstate 10, the Central Valley and the Bay Area up Interstate 5, and El Paso about 800 miles east on Interstate 10. Las Vegas and Phoenix deliver late the same day or early the next, and El Paso needs two days for a single driver.

Vans, flatbeds and box trucks in Commerce

Dry vans carry most of the freight, from transloaded import goods to food, apparel and furniture, and our own tractors pull 53 foot vans when they are free. Box trucks matter here more than in most places, because a lot of Commerce freight is a partial load, a delivery to a store or showroom, or a dock that cannot take a full size trailer, and box trucks show up in our 2026 dispatch records on the Commerce and Las Vegas lanes in both directions. Flatbeds for steel, machinery and building materials come from partner carriers vetted through Highway, and power only serves shippers with their own trailer pools. We do not run port drayage: once a container is unloaded and its freight is on a trailer or in a warehouse, we can take it anywhere in the West.

Peak season, traffic and dock hours

Commerce runs on the import calendar. From late summer into the fall, when retailers bring goods in ahead of the holidays, the rail yards and transload warehouses are at full stretch and trucks book further ahead, so give us notice in those months. The freeways are the other variable: Interstate 5, Interstate 710 and State Route 60 all crawl in the late afternoon, so a trailer that loads after lunch may not reach a receiver outside the basin until the following morning. Tell us the receiver’s dock hours and appointment rules, and the dispatcher plans the arrival around them.

Rail, ports and transload freight

Much of what moves through Commerce arrived by sea, then came off a train or out of a container in a warehouse nearby. International containers are often unloaded within a few miles of the ports or the rail yards and the goods reloaded into 53 foot domestic trailers, which hold more and can go anywhere without a container to return. That transload freight is where we fit: we pick up from the warehouse, deliver to distribution centers and stores across the western states, and bring domestic freight back from the Central Valley, the Bay Area and Las Vegas. For heavy and oversize equipment that lands at the ports, our step deck and RGN trucking page explains how we move it.