I-40 Oklahoma to the Carolinas: bulk bag freight lane

What moves on the I-40 lane

From wheat fields to Piedmont mills

The west end starts in wheat and cattle. Oklahoma feed mills and flour mills fill bags, and feedlot supplements come in them. Fort Smith sits on the Oklahoma border where the Poteau River joins the Arkansas. From there the road follows the Arkansas River valley to Little Rock, then crosses the Delta, where rice and soybeans are the crops and rice dryers and seed companies take in new bales.

Tennessee mixes manufacturing with farming. Plants around Nashville and Knoxville take in resin, chemicals and additives, and middle Tennessee farms buy feed and fertilizer. In North Carolina the Piedmont has textile and furniture plants, and the coastal plain east of Raleigh raises hogs and poultry, so feed ingredients and minerals travel in bags to the mills that serve them.

Feed for animals goes in new bags. A plant that bags a mineral or a filler can sometimes take inspected used bags, if the product is non-food and nothing about it is static-sensitive.

Rivers and mountain grades

The McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System has river ports at Fort Smith and Little Rock, so fertilizer and other bulk product can arrive by barge and leave on I-40 in bags. Little Rock's port lies on the river east of downtown, beside an industrial park. At Memphis the road crosses the Mississippi on the Hernando de Soto Bridge. Between Jackson and Nashville it crosses the Tennessee River.

East of Knoxville, I-40 climbs through the Pigeon River Gorge into North Carolina. Rockslides and storm damage have closed it there, and when it is shut, trucks detour on other interstates. We check the gorge before booking an Asheville delivery. The road ends at Wilmington, where the state port works containers and bulk on the Cape Fear River.

Memphis is the hinge

Memphis has river terminals, several railroads and a large concentration of warehouses. A lot of LTL freight on I-40 passes through a terminal there, which is useful: two pallets of bales from a western supplier to a Raleigh feed mill can ride a linehaul truck east and a local truck the last miles.

The Mid-South also grows cotton, and cottonseed, hulls and meal move from gins to feed buyers; soybeans and corn from the region reach Memphis-area elevators and river terminals, and some of that leaves in bags for specialty buyers.

Truckload makes sense on the long hauls, Oklahoma to the Carolinas in one go, or a full trailer of resin bags to a molder in Tennessee. Ask for truckload when the count fills a 53-foot trailer, or when the product is dense enough that a partial trailer still hits its weight limit.

Builds that match the cargo and the climate

Arkansas rice going to a mill wants a clean, new circular woven bag with a duffle or spout top and a discharge spout, so the miller meters it into a pit. Poultry and hog feed premix for eastern Carolina mills usually wants a liner, since vitamins and trace minerals cake when they pick up humidity. Fertilizer for Oklahoma wheat growers is rough on fabric, so coated material or heavier weave keeps the grains from working through.

Resin bound for a Nashville or Greensboro molder rides in spout-top, spout-bottom bags with a sealed liner where the buyer asks for one. Any of these can be ordered with four lift loops for a forklift or with one or two loops for a crane hook.

From the Delta to the Cape Fear coast, summers are hot and wet. Bales left in a trailer yard soak up heat; bales left outdoors take on sun and rain. Ask the receiver to move pallets under a roof the day they arrive, keep them off a damp floor, and hold back opening a bale until the line needs it. Filled bags of hygroscopic product, the kind that draws water from the air, need a liner and a dry building, not just a tarp.

Asking for a bag on I-40

Start with the bag. The SWL and safety factor, size, top and bottom, loops, fabric weight or coating, liner, and the static type if the powder is flammable. Then the receiving end: ZIP, dock or liftgate, appointment rules. For a pickup of empties, the count, how they are baled, and what they held.

We plan backward from the day the line needs bags. We won't promise a window or a price before a carrier has the load, and on this lane we will flag it when a mountain closure might reroute the run.