When the combines stop rolling and the bins are full, Qeep Logistics already has hopper-bottom and end-dump capacity staged at the elevator. We built our harvest desk around the calendar, not the other way around.
Agriculture moves in seasonal waves. Qeep locks carrier contracts in Q2 so capacity is already in place when Sep–Nov harvest peaks arrive.
Vented steel hoppers — corn, soybeans, wheat, canola. Elevator-certified, wash records verified.
MAP, DAP, potash, limestone, urea. Road-legal spreader-site delivery.
Headers, combines, air seeders — multi-state permits handled, escort coordinated.
Harvest compression windows of four to six weeks demand a 3× capacity spike with almost no lead time. Spot-market rates spike and available hopper equipment disappears. Qeep holds committed harvest-season capacity through carrier agreements locked in Q2, giving shippers access to pre-priced loads without scrambling in October.
Not every dry-van carrier can cover hopper-bottom grain or end-dump fertilizer. The wrong trailer type means rejected loads at the elevator, missed appointments and a damaged producer relationship. Qeep’s ag carrier vetting specifically screens for hopper-bottom and end-dump certification, trailer wash records and elevator access credentials.
Wet grain held in a trailer overnight gains moisture content and can begin to heat. Delayed delivery to a drying facility creates grade-loss or outright rejection. Qeep dispatchers monitor drying-facility hours and elevator appointment schedules, coordinating arrival windows that keep grain moving within acceptable hold times.
Inland grain elevators in Nebraska, Saskatchewan or Manitoba may have a single county-road access and strict appointment windows. Many general freight carriers refuse these lanes or quote prohibitive deadhead. Qeep’s rural ag carrier network includes owner-operators who run these corridors regularly and know elevator procedures.
Moving a 40-foot wide corn head or a 120-foot air-seeder toolbar across state and provincial borders requires multi-jurisdiction oversize permits, route surveys and in some cases police escort coordination. Qeep’s flatbed desk handles the full permit stack so growers and dealers don’t manage paperwork from a field.
From the harvest desk through to intermodal grain export corridors — a structured sequence for every volume and commodity type.
A specialized grain logistics team is staffed from September 1 through November 30 with direct lines to hopper-bottom and end-dump carrier pools. Pre-committed capacity contracts, elevator appointment management and 24-hour dispatch keep loads moving through harvest’s tightest windows.
We maintain a year-round vetted roster of hopper-bottom (grain) and end-dump / belly-dump (fertilizer, lime, feed) carriers across the US Corn Belt, Canadian Prairies and Pacific Northwest. Trailer wash records, grade certificates and elevator access cards are pre-verified so every dispatch is compliant on arrival.
Qeep coordinates USDA Federal Grain Inspection Service (FGIS) and Canadian Grain Commission / CFIA inspection documentation for export-destined grain. Our ops team ensures sampling records, grade certificates and phytosanitary paperwork travel with every load flagged for export terminals.
From headers and combines to anhydrous nurse tanks and large-frame planters, our flatbed desk manages step-deck, double-drop and RGN selections, state and provincial oversize permits, route surveys and escort coordination. Single-call coverage from dealer yard to field.
For unit-train-sized volumes or long-haul grain moving to export corridors, Qeep books 53-foot intermodal containers on CN, CP, BNSF and UP with dray coordination at origin and destination ramps, providing a 15–20% cost advantage over all-highway hopper on lanes exceeding 800 miles.
The USDA Federal Grain Inspection Service mandates official grade, weight and moisture certificates for grain moving in interstate commerce and for export. Qeep coordinates sampling windows and FGIS appointment scheduling at certified facilities to keep loads export-eligible.
Canadian grain exported across provincial or international borders requires Canadian Grain Commission (CGC) grading and, for plant-health concerns, CFIA phytosanitary certificates. Qeep’s Canada-side ops team manages CGC inspection requests and cross-border phytosanitary documentation under CFIA authority.
The FSMA Sanitary Transportation Rule (21 CFR Part 1, Subpart O) covers grain moving for human consumption, requiring trailer sanitation records, temperature control where applicable and written transportation agreements. Qeep maintains FSMA-compliant carrier agreements and trailer wash documentation for food-grade grain lanes.
Grain treated with phosphine or methyl bromide for pest control is subject to EPA registration requirements and re-entry intervals. Carriers moving fumigated grain must carry hazmat endorsements and proper UN placards. Qeep routes fumigated loads only through HAZMAT-endorsed carriers with 49 CFR compliant documentation.
Agricultural machinery on open-deck trailers must comply with 49 CFR Part 393 cargo securement rules including chain size, tie-down count and blocking/bracing for machinery with protruding components. Qeep’s flatbed carriers are vetted on securement compliance and tarping requirements for equipment moves.
Dedicated trailer, single shipper, point-to-point — fastest transit and full chain-of-custody.
Open-deck capacity for oversize, machinery, building materials and steel — with permits and escorts.
Door-to-door rail-and-truck with cost savings on long-haul lanes and lower carbon per mile.
Agricultural freight is the most seasonal work in Canadian trucking, and the seasonality runs in two directions rather than one. There is an inbound peak in March, April and May, when seed, fertiliser and crop protection have to reach retailers and farms before the ground is ready, and an outbound peak from August through October when the crop comes off. Both windows are short, both are weather-driven, and neither moves to accommodate a carrier who is busy elsewhere. Planning agricultural freight means accepting that the calendar is set by the field, and building the capacity plan backwards from it.
The equipment side is where the squeeze shows first. Hopper trailers, end dumps, air-ride vans for bagged product and flatdecks for equipment and totes are all in demand in the same weeks, and the pool of drivers who are comfortable working farm yards, elevators and gravel approaches is smaller than the pool that runs dock-to-dock freight. A shipper who tenders a hopper load in the third week of September is competing against every other shipper in the region for the same trailers. A shipper who commits volume in July usually has them.
Spring adds a constraint that has nothing to do with demand. Across the Prairies and much of rural Ontario and Quebec, secondary roads go under seasonal weight restrictions during the thaw, commonly known as half-load season. Legal axle weights drop sharply for several weeks, which means a load that runs at full weight in February needs either two trucks or a different route in April. The restriction dates are published by the road authority each spring and they shift with the weather. We check them before quoting rather than after loading, because discovering a half-load road at the farm gate costs a day and a second truck.
Weather also decides what can be picked up at all. A wet harvest pushes the entire schedule right and compresses the same volume into fewer days; a dry one pulls it forward. Neither is predictable in July, which is the argument for flexible capacity rather than a rigid schedule. What works in practice is a committed base of trailers for the volume you are confident about, a named backup carrier for each lane, and a spot allowance for the surge, so that the week the combines run long you are adding trucks rather than looking for a broker.
The last piece is yard reality. Farm and elevator pickups are not docks. Turning room, ground conditions after rain, loading equipment, hours of operation and whether anyone is there at five in the morning all decide whether a truck loads or waits. We ask those questions when the lane is set up, note the answers, and give them to the driver with the dispatch, which is a small piece of administration that removes most of the detention on agricultural lanes. It also tells us which lanes need a driver who has run them before and which can take any qualified truck, and that distinction is worth more in the middle of harvest than any rate negotiation.
Most Canadian grain and oilseed reaches export in a rail car, but almost all of it reaches the rail car in a truck. The first leg, from farm or on-farm storage to the primary elevator, is a short-haul trucking problem with a very sharp peak, and it is the leg that determines whether the rail programme downstream stays loaded. When elevator space is tight or a rail programme is delayed, the trucks back up in the yard and the whole chain slows. Coordinating the truck side to the actual receiving capacity of the elevator, rather than to the preferred schedule of the grower, is most of the job.
Destination changes the equipment and the paperwork. Grain moving to a domestic processor, a crush plant or a feed mill usually runs in hoppers or walking floors on a repeatable lane. Specialty crops such as pulses, lentils and certain oilseeds increasingly move in ocean containers stuffed inland, which turns the movement into a drayage and transload problem with vessel cut-offs attached to it. Missing a cut-off does not delay the shipment by a day, it delays it by a sailing, so the container schedule drives the truck schedule rather than the other way around.
Trailer condition is a genuine commercial risk in this sector and not a formality. Grain, oilseed and pulses are food or feed, and a trailer that previously carried fertiliser, treated seed or anything non-food can contaminate a load that is worth far more than the freight. Washout certificates, prior-load declarations and a driver who knows to refuse a dirty trailer are the controls that prevent a rejected load at the elevator scale. We ask for the prior load on every food-grade tender and we hold the paperwork, because the cost of getting this wrong is the value of the commodity and not the value of the move.
Weights and moisture decide what the load is actually worth. Grain is bought and sold on graded weight and moisture at the receiving scale, so the scale ticket matters more than the bill of lading. Loading to legal weight without going over, knowing which scales are on the route, and having the ticket flow back to the shipper the same day are all part of the freight service on these lanes. It is unglamorous work and it is where a good agricultural carrier separates itself from a general freight carrier who happens to have a trailer.
Finally, the export gateways behave differently from each other. Vancouver and Prince Rupert serve Asia-Pacific and are constrained by rail capacity through the mountain corridor; Thunder Bay serves the seaway with a shipping season that closes in winter; Montreal and the east coast serve Europe, North Africa and Latin America. Where your buyer is decides which gateway makes sense, and the gateway decides how far the truck leg runs and how much rail sits between. We will lay that out with the transit and the cost before you commit to a routing, so the decision is made on numbers rather than habit.
Yes. Our Prairie grain carrier network includes owner-operators who run rural Saskatchewan and Manitoba elevator lanes regularly. We pre-verify elevator access credentials and coordinate appointment windows with the elevator before dispatch, so there are no surprises at the scale.
We recommend locking harvest-season capacity through a committed volume agreement by July 1 for September–November starts. This allows us to pre-assign hopper-bottom carriers to your lanes at contracted rates before the October spot-market spike. Spot loads are available but carry 15–30% premium during peak harvest.
We handle dry fertilizer end-dump and belly-dump (MAP, DAP, potash, limestone, urea) extensively. Anhydrous ammonia and UAN solution are pressurized liquid commodities requiring MC-330/331 tankers and Hazmat endorsements; we can source these through our liquid bulk carrier network, though lead time and carrier vetting steps are longer than for dry.
Export-destined grain requires USDA FGIS grade and weight certificates, a bill of lading with official gross and net weights, and for certain destinations a CFIA phytosanitary certificate. Qeep coordinates the FGIS inspection appointment, accompanies sampling with the elevator’s weighmaster, and ensures all export docs are packaged with the BOL before dispatch.
Yes. Our flatbed desk handles multi-state and cross-border oversize permits for combines, headers, air seeders, and planters. We conduct a route survey, obtain state-by-state travel permits, and coordinate pilot-car escort where required. Single point of contact from dealer yard to farm.
Bagged seed and packaged ag-chemicals (herbicides, insecticides, fungicides) move on standard 53-foot dry vans with food-grade or chemical-grade wash-outs as required by commodity. For pesticides classified as hazmat under 49 CFR, we route only through hazmat-endorsed carriers with proper placarding and SDS documentation on board.
Reefer ocean and road, USDA/CFIA compliance, produce protocols and food-grade warehousing.
All 9 DOT hazmat classes — liquid bulk, ISO tank, IBC, drum and packaged chemicals.
Oilfield services, drilling support, wind/solar components, energy project cargo.
Tell us the origin, destination and mode. A Qeep specialist replies within 10 minutes with live capacity, lane price, and a transit window you can actually plan around.
