Off-dock facility

An off-dock facility is a container yard or CFS located outside the port’s main terminal area that handles boxes the quay cannot hold, easing on-dock congestion. It receives, stores, stuffs, and unstuffs containers and shuttles them to and from the berth, so the terminal keeps its limited apron for vessel operations. Off-dock yards take import and export FCL stacking, empty-container storage, and LCL consolidation, often under customs supervision. They are common at space-constrained gateways where the terminal outsources storage and gate functions to nearby private depots, distinct from a hinterland ICD because they sit at the port city, not deep inland.