Crating and export crates in Houston

What moves through Houston

Houston freight runs on the Houston Ship Channel. Port Houston operates public container terminals on the channel, including Bayport and Barbours Cut, and the channel is lined with private terminals that handle liquids, breakbulk and project cargo. A shipper in Houston can be crating a compressor for a container at Bayport on Monday and a pressure vessel for a heavy-lift berth on Thursday.

Port Houston describes itself as the number 1 US port in waterborne tonnage and the 5th ranked US container port by total TEUs, with foreign waterborne tonnage of 220.1 million short tons in 2024. Behind the port sit two Class I railroads, BNSF and Union Pacific, and a ring of interstates: I-10 east and west, I-45 to Dallas and Galveston, and US-59 (now I-69) toward Laredo and the Rio Grande Valley.

Energy and process equipment

Houston is known for energy equipment and petrochemical machinery. That means centrifugal and reciprocating pumps, control and gate valves, heat exchangers, compressor skids, wellhead and subsea hardware, drilling components and the instrumentation that goes with them. Most of it is heavy, compact and expensive to replace, and much of it leaves the country.

Texas was the top exporting state in 2025 with $450.3 billion in goods exports, 20.7 percent of the US total, and machinery manufacturing is among its top nonenergy export industries (BLS). For a Houston machine builder, that is the everyday background to a crate order: repeat shipments of similar equipment to the same few destination countries.

Crating problems with Houston loads

Weight is the first problem. A packaged compressor or a pump on a baseplate often needs a skid of full-length runners, lag-bolted through to the load's own base, with the crate walls framed off the skid and not resting on the equipment. We ask for the gross weight and the centre of gravity before we draw the base, because a load that sits heavy at one end needs the strongback moved to match.

Salt air is the second. Gulf humidity and weeks in a container or on a quay will rust bare machined faces. Export crates for flanges, shafts and valve trim are lined with a barrier bag, VCI film or desiccant sized to the cube of the bag, and the bag is sealed after the last inspection so it is not opened at the dock.

• Pumps and valves: bagged, blocked at the flanges, bolted to the skid
• Vessels and exchangers: open-frame crates with cradles and lifting lugs left accessible
• Instrument panels: sheathed crates with shock and tip indicators
• Spares kits: standard-size cleated crates, repeat orders on file

From the Ship Channel to the dock

Many Houston shippers hand cargo to a forwarder who books the ocean leg and sets a cargo cut-off at the terminal. The crate has to be finished, stamped and on the truck ahead of that cut-off, not on the day of it. When you send the quote request, tell us the cut-off and the date the load is ready to close, and we work back from there.

Crates are built to order and delivered to the shipper's dock in the Houston area. For a crate that must pass a standard dock door, we can ship a knockdown kit with the panels numbered and a hardware bag, so your own team closes it around the load on the floor. For loads too tall to fit a door once closed, that is usually the better route.

Air freight out of Houston

Houston's cargo airports include George Bush Intercontinental, with Hobby handling a smaller part of the load. Air cargo changes the crate: dimensional weight pays by the cube, so the crate is built as tight to the load as blocking and bracing allow, and lighter sheathed panels replace heavy lumber where the load permits. Batteries, fluids and anything under 49 CFR need their own paperwork, and we build to the carrier's acceptance rules your forwarder gives us.

A rush order from a plant down the road from the airport is common in this business: a failed seal, a replacement bearing, a field-service part. A small cleated crate built to the part's inside dimensions will do.

Mexico by road, Galveston by rail and truck

Road freight south to Mexico runs through Laredo on I-69 and I-35, and many Houston machine builders ship to Mexican plants on flatbeds. Crates for Mexico face different handling than ocean crates: more forklift contact, more weather on open trailers, and straps that load at several points. We reinforce the base and skid ends, and roof the crate with sheathing when the trailer is open.

Galveston's terminals are close enough to Houston that some shipments start in a Houston plant and finish there. Whichever gateway you use, tell us in the quote which one, so the crate and its marks match the booking.