Locke Transportation

About Us

Since 1991 Locke Transportation has been a leader in the transportation of refrigerated goods in Chicago. The reasons for our success are simple. We gathered the very best people and equipment available and committed ourselves to exceptional customer service. We are proud of our outstanding record of safe on-time deliveries, and our reputation for integrity and financial stability.

Over the past 24 years we have built many great relationships with freight forwarders, steamship lines, suppliers and cold storages which provides us with a very broad knowledge of how this business works.

Our mission is to provide reliable warehouse & transportation services and solutions at competitive pricing while treating every customer with courtesy and respect. We stand resolved to our commitment: quality service and technology creates value-added partnerships for our clients.
Teamwork

To maintain quality control our staff is constantly monitoring each and every shipment to insure that your product gets where it needs to be.

We distinguish ourselves from the competition by offering careful & accurate freight handling. Locke Transportation routes are carefully scheduled and constantly monitored to ensure problem-free deliveries. Our truck fleet provides smooth, uninterrupted service. . We fulfill our transportation promise every time.

Drayage Services

Driver shortages, rising fuel costs and capacity constraints are making transportation procurement a discipline best suited to companies equipped with the proper technology, comittment, reliability and financial stability. Locke Transportation offers all of these and more, including affordable rates.

Locke Transportation Customer Service is designed to provide you with the efficiencies required to excel in a sophisticated, on-demand supply chain. Customers have the ability to track any load status through our newly added Active Trac Interface, which is available to customer 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. While we strive for 100% on time delivery, we will notify customers of any unexpected delays so you can plan accordingly.

Being a member of the UIIA allows us to have interchange agreements with over 50 steamship lines including but not limited to Maersk, OOCL, Hanjin, Hyundai, MSC, Hapag Lloyd, CMA-CGM, APL, Horizon & Sea Star. We can provide drayage services within a 225 mile radius of Chicago, including Wisconsin, Minnesota, Indiana, Michigan, Iowa and Ohio.

We will pickup the assigned ocean container, dry box or a reefer unit, from the Chicago rail, dray to requested location, pickup/ deliver the product, and return back to the rail.

Drayage services include pickups, deliveries, drop & hooks, and overweight shipments.

We’re constantly in touch with our drivers ensuring our customer’s product gets picked up or delivered efficiently and on time.

Warehouse Services

Located near I-55 and I-294 Interstates in Chicago, our trucking terminal and warehouse facility takes advantage of the congestion-free side of Chicago and is strategically located close to the major depots & rail hubs making Locke Transportation the logical choice for your dry and cold storage needs.

Our 30,000 SQ FT facility is located in a safe industrial neighborhood situated on 5 acres of level ground. Our facility is equipped with 40 dock doors, loads of dry, refrigerated, and frozen warehouse space, 60+ trailer & truck parking spots, and our facility is fully fenced & gated with over a dozen high resolution security cameras with night vision.
DRY, REFRIGERATED, AND FROZEN WAREHOUSE SPACE

Built with flexibility in mind, our warehouse facility supports three temperature zones;

35F degree cooler
0F degree freezer
Ambient air temperature

CROSS DOCK AND TRANS-LOADING

If getting product to your customer as quickly and inexpensively as possible is your goal, Locke Transportation is able to cross dock products, all one type of product or multiple products from multiple locations. Dry/refrigerated, floor loads/palletized loads and overweight loads are our speciality. We can also perform mobile trans-loading at the location of your container or trailer if your load is stuck due to weight restrictions or other unanticipated complications.
FLOOR LOADING AND UNLOADING

Bringing in or shipping out your product without the use of pallets is no trouble at all. Locke Transportation has the equipment and man power to load and unload goods directly onto and off a container or trailer floor.
TAKE WEIGHTS

If you sell your product by the pound, Locke Transporation can help. We can capture product weights from your product box labels and calculate net & gross weights for full or partial loads.
DRUM HANDLING

Do you store your product in drums? No problem! Locke Transportation is equipped with drum handling equipment making us capable of loading and unloading drums.
SPECIAL HANDLING

We can accomodate special loading requests such as but not limited to;

Loading frozen product in the nose and fresh product on the tail
Transfering product to heat-treated pallets
Remove all-English and re-apply multi-lingual product labels
Dissasembly of inbound delivered product pallets and reassemble with a combination of products or in a particular unloading order
For product stored in our dry, refrigerated, or frozen warehouse we can take product samples and ship them to you or to an inspection facility
We can coordinate with the 3rd party inspection companies to be present for crossdock and container loading
If applicable for your type of product, we can coordinate with government agencies for product inspection

PHOTOGRAPHS AND DIGITAL DOCUMENTATION

We understand that it’s very important your product arrive at its destination undamaged and looking profesisonally handled. We want your product to arrive at its destination in the same condition or better than it arrived at our facility. Unfortunately, on its journey to its destination, we know that sometimes product can shift or get damaged. To help with yours or your customer’s questions about loading and/or insurance claims, we use photo and video documentation of every shipping container or trailer we load. We can also accomodate photo documentation special requests such as taking a photo of a particular box label or a temperature recorder. At your request, we can make this information available to you and your customers located anywhere in the world using our Google Drive.
ONLINE PORTAL

We provide every customer with a username and password to our online customer portal, activeTRAC. activeTRAC is where you can access all the information about your shipments and warehouse inventory. Some of activeTRAC’s features and typical drayage, crossdock, and warehouse information available through activeTRAC includes;

Product supplier bill of lading documents
Rail ingate J1 documents
Crossdock or shipment piece, weight, seal, and USDA certification number.
Shipment status information such as origin and destination location names, hook & drop dates & times, container last free date, delivered date, and pending, completed, and billed shipment status
Most shipment details and status information is available for export to a CSV file where you can download, open, and manipulate in MS Excel, Open Office, Google Sheets, and most popular spreadsheet programs.
activeTRAC doesn’t sleep and is available 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, 365 days per year.
If for some reason our default customer portal doesn’t meet your needs, customization is available.

FRIENDLY & FAST CUSTOMER SERVICE

Business these days moves at the speed of light! With most companies running “just in time”, a slow link in your distribution chain is not an option. We understand this and emphasize our cooperative and fast customer service responses.

ADDITIONAL SERVICES

If you cannot find your particular needs addressed on our website, this doesn’t mean we cannot accomodate you! Some of our additional services include;

Overweight freight consolidation
Product repacking
Product Weighing
Product Labeling
Product Banding
Inventory Control
Other value added services available upon request