Demurrage and equipment availability. Containers are commonly leased for a specific time period. The leasing contract may also specify that the maritime container cannot leave the vicinity of the port or cannot spend more than a specific amount of time inland. Transloading is thus performed to insure that the leased container is handed back to the maritime shipping or the leasing company without additional charge. This reduces the repositioning of empty containers over long distances and promotes a higher level of asset utilization for the container lessor. Transloading also enables a more efficient use of both container assets (international and domestic) and can facilitate international trade by freeing transport capacity. For instance, moving maritime containers over long distances in the North American transport system can be considered a suboptimal usage of transport equipment, particularly from the perspective of maritime shipping companies. Conversely, the global maritime shipping industry is mainly designed to handle 40 foot containers and cannot accommodate domestic containers. However, a large amount of transloading for inbound shipments may reduce the availability of maritime containers available for export at inland locations. This is a salient problem for the export of containerized commodities.