South Florida Drayage in 2026: Why PortMiami and Port Everglades Trade Is Driving New Demand Statewide

If your supply chain touches Florida, your drayage strategy is now a balance-sheet item. PortMiami moves more than 1.2 million TEUs a year and Port Everglades just closed Fiscal Year 2025 at a record 1,167,552 TEUs, simultaneously hitting all-time highs in cargo, energy, and cruise volumes. Importers used to pick a port and forget about it. In 2026, the smartest shippers are routing dynamically between the two and trucking across the state from whichever terminal clears fastest.

Trade flows are repositioning the South Florida gateway

Port Everglades is now the No. 1 U.S. port for Caribbean trade, handling roughly 26% of regional cargo. It also accounts for nearly 10% of all U.S.-Latin America container trade. PortMiami’s perishable, e-commerce, and apparel volumes from the Caribbean and Central America continue to grow as nearshoring pulls more production into the hemisphere. The two ports together effectively function as one gateway feeding the entire Florida peninsula — from Jacksonville distribution centers to Tampa retailers to Orlando theme parks to Naples grocery DCs.

What that means for shippers: a container landed in Miami at noon may be delivered to a warehouse in Lakeland that same evening, while one landed at Port Everglades can be on the road to Tallahassee before the next ship has even tied up.

Fuel: the line item that is reshaping rate quotes

Diesel averaged $3.72/gal nationally in February 2026 and climbed into the $4.20–$4.75 range by April. Fuel is roughly 21% of total cost per mile in trucking — so every ten-cent move resets carrier margins. Because most fuel surcharge programs reset weekly, carriers are often paying today’s price while being reimbursed at last week’s rate. That gap eventually shows up in base rate increases.

Practical implication: longer Florida lanes — Miami to Jacksonville, Port Everglades to Pensacola — are now the lanes where fuel discipline matters most. Locking in lane pricing with a carrier that hedges fuel, runs aerodynamic trailers, and operates idle-reduction technology can save thousands of dollars per truck per year.

The driver shortage: 60K short today, 175K by 2028

The American Trucking Associations puts the current U.S. shortage at roughly 60,000 drivers. The 2028 forecast was just revised upward to 175,000. The median age of a U.S. tractor-trailer driver is now 57, and a federal rule that took effect in March 2026 restricts CDL issuance and renewal for asylum seekers, refugees, and DACA recipients — potentially removing up to 200,000 drivers from the workforce.

South Florida feels this earlier than other regions because:

• Caribbean and Latin American import volumes keep climbing
• Local drivers face high housing costs and long port queue times
• A large share of regional drivers were foreign-born

Translation for shippers: if you do not have committed drayage capacity in 2026, you are spot-bidding against everyone else for a shrinking pool of trucks.

Congestion is shifting from the gate to the inland network

PortMiami terminals have invested in appointment systems and the South Florida Container Terminal is upgrading cargo yards to support electrified rubber tire gantries by late 2026. That helps inside the gate. Outside the gate, I-95, SR-836, and the Palmetto Expressway remain the choke points — a 25-mile drayage move from PortMiami to a Doral warehouse can run 45 minutes off-peak and over two hours during peak.

The carriers that hit dwell-time targets in 2026 are the ones that:

1. Pre-pull at off-peak hours and stage at near-port yards
2. Use real-time terminal queue data to time gate arrivals
3. Run dedicated lanes to Central and North Florida overnight

Climate, ESG, and the new compliance lens

Global climate policy is filtering into freight contracts. Florida’s port sustainability initiatives, IMO 2026 emissions rules at sea, and Scope 3 reporting requirements from major retailers are pushing shippers toward carriers that can document fuel efficiency, EV-ready terminals, and reduced empty miles. Drayage providers that cannot report on emissions per container are starting to lose RFPs to those that can.

What Go Freight is doing about it

We dispatch from both PortMiami and Port Everglades with one operations team, so we route to whichever terminal is clearing fastest that hour. Our drivers cover every county in Florida and we hold capacity on the I-95 and I-75 corridors during peak weeks. We hedge fuel into our lane pricing, publish gate-to-delivery dwell metrics for our customers, and run appointment-based pickups to keep your container out of the yard.

If your 2026 plan includes growing volume into Florida — or you just want a second carrier so you stop paying spot rates — let us scope a dedicated drayage program for your business.