Commonly, a transfer point on a transport route where the mode of transport (or type of carrier) changes and where large-volume shipments are reduced in size. For example, goods may be unloaded from a ship and transferred to trucks at an ocean port.

A break of bulk point (or a break in bulk point) is a place where cargo is shifted from one form of transport to another. The most obvious example of this would be a sea port or an airport. At such places, cargo comes in on a ship or an airplane. It would then need to be moved across land on some other sort of transport. Most likely, this would be a truck or perhaps a train. At the break of bulk point, the cargo is transferred from the one form of transportation to the other.

This idea is important in the study of industrialization because it helps to explain why some places became industrialized before others. Industrialization often occurred at break of bulk points. This made sense because this was a point where cargo was going to have to be offloaded and transferred anyway. For example, imagine that you transport iron ore from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to a port at Gary, Indiana. Once your ship reaches Gary, you are going to have to take the ore off the ship anyway. That means that Gary would be a good place to build a steel mill so that you could move the ore directly from the ship to the mill rather than putting the ore on a train and moving it somewhere else to make it into steel.

Because of this, break of bulk points often became centers of industrialization. This is why the idea of a break of bulk point is important when we study industrialization.