  We investigate the conductance and zero-frequency shot noise of interacting,
multi-level quantum dots coupled to leads. We observe that co-tunneling
assisted sequential tunneling (CAST) processes play a dominant role in the
transition region from Coulomb blockade to sequential tunneling. We analyze for
intermediate coupling strength the dependence of the conductance due to CAST
processes on temperature, coupling constant, and gate voltage. Remarkably, the
width of the CAST transport feature scales only with temperature, but not with
the coupling constant. While the onset of inelastic co-tunneling is associated
with a super-Poissonian noise, the noise is even stronger above the threshold
for CAST processes
