I-75 Michigan to Florida: bulk bag freight lane

What moves on the I-75 lane

Factories up north, farms and mines down south

In Michigan, the Saginaw Valley and the Thumb, around Bay City, Saginaw and Flint, grow sugar beets and dry beans, and Detroit's auto industry runs on parts made by plastics molders who buy resin in bulk bags. Toledo has a long history in glass, and the Ohio stretch through Dayton and Cincinnati is full of manufacturing and consumer goods plants that bag or unbag powders.

Kentucky's Bluegrass around Lexington is horse country, and horse feed and supplements move in bags. Dalton, Georgia, just south of Chattanooga, is known for carpet mills, which use polymers and mineral fillers in backing.

Middle Georgia mines kaolin clay, a fine white powder that gets into everything, so it wants coated fabric or a liner and a sealed spout. South Georgia grows peanuts and pecans around Tifton and Valdosta. Ocala, on I-75 in north-central Florida, is horse country like Lexington, so feed and bedding travel at both ends of the lane. Central Florida, east of Tampa, mines phosphate rock for fertilizer. Kaolin and phosphate are non-flammable, so a Type A bag is often all they need where no flammable dust or vapour is present; follow your site's own assessment.

The Mackinac Bridge to Alligator Alley

At the top, I-75 crosses the Straits of Mackinac on the Mackinac Bridge, a toll crossing, and ends at the International Bridge to Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. In Detroit the Ambassador Bridge to Windsor is a few minutes off it. Near Toledo it crosses the Ohio Turnpike, which carries I-80 and I-90.

At Cincinnati, I-75 and I-71 share the Brent Spence Bridge over the Ohio River into Kentucky. In Atlanta it shares the Downtown Connector with I-85, which is slow at most hours; the I-285 ring road lets a through truck skip the core. Knoxville, earlier, sits where the Holston and French Broad rivers meet to form the Tennessee. In Florida it meets I-10 at Lake City, picks up Florida's Turnpike at Wildwood, and meets I-4 at Tampa, where the Port of Tampa Bay ships fertilizer and other bulk. Below Tampa it follows the Gulf side through Sarasota and Fort Myers, and south of Naples it turns east across the Everglades on Alligator Alley, a toll road, toward Fort Lauderdale.

• I-94 and I-96 in Detroit.
• I-70 at Dayton.
• I-64 at Lexington.
• I-40 at Knoxville and I-24 at Chattanooga.
• I-16 at Macon, for Savannah.

Truckload south, LTL in town

This lane is long, so the full trailer is usually the cheaper way to cover it. A molder in Dalton that takes a trailer of resin bags out of Ohio, or a fertilizer blender in central Florida taking a trailer of new bales, books truckload. The load goes dock to dock without a terminal in between. Heavy filled loads also meet real grades: the climb over Jellico Mountain near the Kentucky and Tennessee line, and the ridges north of Chattanooga, slow a loaded trailer and test its brakes.

LTL fits the in-town and regional jobs: three pallets of lined bags to a food plant in Cincinnati, or a top-up to a feed dealer near Lexington. Expect terminal handling, a liftgate if there is no dock, and an appointment in Atlanta, where many receivers keep tight windows.

River ports beside the lane, and weather at both ends

Tampa is not the only port beside this lane. Toledo's port lies on the Maumee River where it meets Lake Erie. Cincinnati handles barges on the Ohio. Chattanooga sits on the Tennessee River, a navigable waterway with river terminals of its own. Barge freight that arrives at any of them, salt, fertilizer or a mineral, can be bagged nearby and sent down the interstate.

At the north end, Detroit and Sault Ste. Marie are both border cities. Freight going into Ontario needs a customs broker; we plan the US leg to a dock on this side of the bridge.

A load that leaves Bay City in January and lands in Tampa can see snow at one end and humid heat at the other. Bales themselves travel well wrapped in stretch film; the risk is storage after delivery. Keep new bags indoors, dry and off the ground, and away from sunlight, which softens woven polypropylene and turns its surface chalky. A bag left outside for long should not be lifted, and nobody should patch one on site.

Send this with an I-75 request

Everything below goes in the first message, so a carrier can price it at once.

• The label: SWL, safety factor, dimensions, top, bottom, loops, fabric, liner, static type.
• The product, especially if it is a fine powder like kaolin or a food like peanuts.
• Where it delivers: ZIP, dock or no dock, receiving hours, and whether a toll road is on the way.
• Bag count and the date the line starts.
• For empties: count, baling, what they carried, 5:1 or 6:1.