The steel manufacturers and companies that manipulate steel products are faced with a unique challenge when it comes to the shipping of steel bars, coils and other bulk and products. This type of cargo is typically shipped in ocean containers. However, steel mills are not typically equipped to unload sea containers. These companies are equipped to unload flatbed trailers. The transferring of these heavy-duty items between different modes of transportation presents a problem for these companies. In addition to the challenge of unloading their steel products from sea containers, these companies face storage issues as their stateside inventory often exceeded their warehouse capacity.

Furthermore, steel tariffs have forced companies to reexamine how they manage their stateside inventories. The threat of tariff increases motivate some steel companies to get foreign produced steel stocked in U.S. warehouses ahead of their implementation.