The Port of Montreal Drayage Window
Most importers and freight forwarders think the port ends when the container clears the gate. It doesn't. The real constraint is drayage availability and the window your warehouse can accept inbound. Port of Montreal moves roughly 2.7 million TEU annually, and every single one of those containers needs a truck and a dock door within a narrow 24 to 48 hour window.
That window isn't infinite. Drayage carriers don't hold equipment waiting for your warehouse to open a dock door. We run a published inbound cutoff at FENGYE LOGISTICS, and if your drayage arrival lands outside that window, the container sits at the trucking depot and the free time clock keeps running. That's detention, and detention compounds fast.
In Q4 or during port congestion, a standard drayage hold can eat 2 to 3 working days of free time before your cargo even touches a warehouse floor. The port charges detention in hourly increments, not daily, which means a 36-hour hold is already into the second billing cycle.
CBSA Clearance and Release Timing
The second constraint is customs clearance. Your broker submits a Pre-Arrival Review System (PARS) declaration before the truck arrives. CBSA either clears it immediately, flags it for documentary review, or holds it for a physical examination. That's not warehouse ops, but it changes everything about when we can take possession.
Release on Minimum Documentation (RMD) is fast. A standard commercial import with clean papers hits our dock 12 to 16 hours after drayage arrival. A documentary hold adds 24 to 48 hours. A physical examination can add 3 to 5 working days depending on CBSA's queue and the goods classification. CBSA publishes hold volumes weekly, and during tariff reviews or anti-dumping investigations, holds spike.
This is why having a customs broker who knows your HS classifications and your supplier's documentation patterns matters. Every day a container sits in a CBSA hold is a day your dock-to-stock SLA gets missed, your inventory doesn't flow, and someone else's inbound gets backed up on your dock schedule.
Warehouse Dock-to-Stock Timing
Once the truck pulls into our dock at FENGYE Warehouse, the clock is real. We publish a 48-hour dock-to-stock SLA for standard LTL consolidations and a 24-hour window for FTL cross-dock. That means receiving, putaway, and system entry.
The constraint isn't effort. It's dock doors. We run 7 dock doors in Montreal, and in Q4 we typically see a 4 to 6 day window where every door is booked and inbound drayage has to queue. A container stuck in a queue loses that 48-hour advantage. The truck driver is eating detention. Your goods aren't in inventory yet.
Importers often blame the warehouse for slow putaway. The real problem is upstream: drayage dispatch windows were too tight, CBSA examination ate 4 days, and by the time the truck actually arrives, the warehouse dock is full for 72 hours.
The Cost Stack: Drayage, Duties, and Handling
An imported 40-foot container incurs drayage (typically CAD 1,200 to CAD 2,400 depending on origin port and destination), customs clearance fees (broker fee, duty, GST/HST), warehouse in-fees (CAD 25 to CAD 50 per container depending on bond type), putaway labor, and then daily storage. If the container sits 10 extra days waiting for dock availability or CBSA clearance, that's CAD 100 to CAD 200 in daily racking charges alone.
Duty is calculated on the landed cost (FOB plus freight plus insurance), and if your HS classification is contested, a customs broker can help you understand the CBSA ruling timeline. Disputed classifications can hold cargo 15 to 30 days while CBSA issues a Determination. In the meantime, your inventory isn't moving and your working capital is tied up.
For exporters, the sequence reverses but the constraint is identical. Your goods sit in a bonded warehouse until export documentation is cleared by CBSA. A Canadian exporter shipping under CUSMA (the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement) has different documentation requirements than one shipping to the EU under CETA (Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement). If your export broker misses a detail on your commercial invoice or certificate of origin, your container gets held at the border and you miss your customer's delivery window.
Real Import-Export Flow
Here's what an actual import week looks like:
Monday morning: drayage is dispatched from Port of Montreal. Truck arrives at FENGYE Warehouse at 14:00. Our dock schedule has an opening at 16:00. Container is unloaded, documentation is scanned, CBSA clearance is verified.
Tuesday morning: putaway is complete. Goods are in racking. System entry confirms inventory in your WMS. You can now pick and ship outbound.
That's the fast path. It works when (1) drayage arrives within our published window, (2) CBSA clearance came back as RMD, and (3) your dock has an open door. If any one of those fails, you add days.
The delay compounds differently for importers vs. exporters. An importer's delay is inventory sit time. An exporter's delay is customer commitment failure. Both hurt cash flow, but one is a warehousing problem and one is a supply chain problem.
Bonded Warehousing and In-Bond Moves
Most importers don't understand the difference between a sufferance warehouse and a bonded warehouse, and the choice matters. A CBSA-authorized in-bond cargo handling warehouse like FENGYE LOGISTICS lets you hold imported goods without paying duty until they're released for domestic consumption. That's useful if you're consolidating multiple containers before final delivery or if you're re-exporting goods.
A bonded warehouse also lets you defer duty payments until goods actually move to a customer, which improves cash flow. The trade-off is that bonded storage has higher handling fees (CAD 40 to CAD 75 per pallet per month vs. CAD 12 to CAD 20 in a regular 3PL warehouse) because CBSA requires more detailed tracking and we carry the risk if goods go missing.
For export, a bonded warehouse is simpler. Your goods sit in inventory until the export order comes in. You consolidate, pack, and ship. CBSA clears the export documentation, and the goods move across the border with no duty paid domestically.
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Drayage and the Q4 Window Problem
Q4 is when everything breaks. From late September through early November, Port of Montreal sees peak volume. Drayage carriers run out of equipment. Warehouse dock doors book weeks in advance. CBSA examination queues grow because volume increases. A container that normally moves from dock to stock in 48 hours now takes 8 to 12 working days.
We see importers scramble in November wondering why their goods aren't in inventory for the holidays. The answer is that drayage wasn't dispatched until October 15th, CBSA held the container for examination because of tariff reviews, and by the time the truck arrived at the warehouse, the dock was booked through November 20th.
The fix is forward planning. Submit your PARS early. Book drayage 3 to 4 weeks ahead in Q4. Talk to your warehouse about dock-to-stock capacity. A 30-day lead time in normal months becomes 60 days in Q4.
Import-export through Canada isn't broken. It's sequential and tight. Every stage depends on the one before it, and a 24-hour delay upstream becomes a 72-hour delay downstream. The importers and exporters who move cargo smoothly are the ones who understand that drayage, customs, and warehouse timing are one problem, not three. Learn more about Fengye Logistics Montreal.
Originally published at https://www.fywarehouse.com/news/import-export-canada-moving-cargo-through-port-of-montreal-and-beyond-501dec9a.
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