Editorial: Intermodal Spawns Interdependence

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It wasn’t so long ago that the rail and trucking industries were grudgingly brought to the intermodal table by a few maritime companies, which were looking for ways to move their loads of freight more quickly and cheaply.

The mutual distrust between the competitors made it hard to envision a time when railroads and truckers would be each other’s customers, let alone partners.

Much has happened in the 40 years since the birth of modern intermodalism, with the bulk of it coming after the two carrier industries were mostly deregulated by Congress in 1980.

A few days in Atlanta at the latest version of the International Intermodal Expo last week illustrated just how far things have come.

Intermodal freight — that is, freight that moves between transportation modes on its journey from maker to buyer — accounted for 17% of the railroads’ more than $30 billion in revenue last year, or more than $5 billion. And virtually every one of those intermodal rail shipments involved at least one truck. In many cases, the movements involved several trucks; in many others cases the freight was a truck — that is, a trailer full of freight.

During the expo, one session seemed to exemplify the growth and maturation of the intermodal business: At the same podium were Walter McCormick, who runs American Trucking Associations; his counterpart at the Association of American Railroads, Ed Hamberger; and the director of the American Association of Port Authorities, Kurt Nagle.

At the session, the three agreed on most major issues and pledged to continue working together on ways to improve the performance of the intermodal freight, where there often seems to be more business than the modes can handle. Absent was the sparring of years past, the jockeying for position with the shipping community.

And there are clear indications that the intermodal sector will continue to grow at a faster rate than the rest of the freight business.

To show just how far intermodalism has come, one need only see that the biggest news at the expo was Donald Schneider’s announcement that Schneider National expects to increase its intermodal business by 20% this year and nearly triple its fleet of intermodal containers to 2,000.

Schneider, whose company, the largest truckload carrier in the industry, did $2.7 billion last year, told the attendees that he is “mode neutral. You would be crazy not to be.…”