Charlotte region, NC and SC I-85 I-77 I-40
NCI-85I-77
The county the region's labor and freight revolve around; Norfolk Southern's intermodal terminal sits inside Charlotte Douglas airport between two runways.
Mecklenburg is where the region's freight comes together. I-85 and I-77 cross in the middle of the county, and Norfolk Southern built a $92 million intermodal terminal on 200 acres between two runways at Charlotte Douglas International Airport, replacing a 40-acre downtown yard. The county's clusters read like a dock list: production technology and heavy machinery, transportation and logistics, textiles, biopharmaceuticals and electric power.
That mix produces two kinds of stack. Machinery and logistics docks collect triple wall empties that arrived with parts. Biopharma and power docks have fewer, cleaner boxes.
Describe a Mecklenburg stack by where it stood. A pile from a distribution dock that has been under a roof is usually Grade A or B and square. A pile from a yard behind a machinery plant may have taken rain, and rain is the line between a box that goes back into service and one that goes to the baler. Biopharma and power docks tend to send fewer boxes, kept cleaner, with the history written down.
The lanes on this page: production technology and heavy machinery, transportation and logistics, textile manufacturing, biopharmaceuticals, and electric power generation and transmission.
Five industry lines are named for Mecklenburg: production technology and heavy machinery, transportation and logistics, textile manufacturing, biopharmaceuticals, and electric power generation and transmission. Machinery and power docks are where the heaviest empties come from, often 4‑wall or 5‑wall boxes with full flap bottoms that held castings, switchgear or fasteners. Biopharma docks keep a short list of clean boxes and a long list of questions about what each held. A request that tells us which of the five lines your dock belongs to is read faster than one that says only that you are in Charlotte.
The county is the middle of the map, and it touches Iredell, Cabarrus, Union, Gaston and York counties. A request from Mecklenburg can be matched north toward Iredell, southeast toward Union, west into Gaston or south across the line into York County.
Suppose a Charlotte logistics dock has sixty single trip boxes at 48 x 40 x 36 in, 3‑wall, full flap, dry and square, plus eight 4‑wall boxes at 48 x 48 x 36 in with creased corners. Written as two lines, each with its own count, footprint, wall count and condition, plus the ZIP, that is a complete request. Mixed docks that blur the two into one line of "a few dozen gaylords" get a slower answer, because the buyer for the clean sixty is not the buyer for the creased eight. Attach what you know about weight and history, then let us sort the rest.
A Mecklenburg stack is the one most often matched across a county line, so read the pages for the counties around it.
All of it, and the cities of Charlotte, Huntersville, Matthews and Pineville sit inside it. Charlotte has its own page.
Count, footprint and wall count are enough to start.
No prices, minimums or times are stated here.