Intermodal Expert: Truckload Risks Falling Into Minor Role

November 8, 2000 10:28 AM, EST

The definition of insanity, says Thomas L. Finkbiner, the new chairman of the Intermodal Transportation Institute at the University of Denver, is when people do the same thing over and over and expect a different result.

As a former intermodal marketing executive at Norfolk Southern Corp., Finkbiner, who is now in trucking as president of Quality Distribution of Tampa, Fla., has seen this scenario play out many times in the railroad industry. Rail carriers are so set in their ways and so constrained by infrastructure that they are doomed to remain minor players in the movement of the nation’s freight, he says.

But now, the truckload industry may be suffering from the same faults, Finkbiner said in remarks to reporters at the Transportation Table in Washington, D.C., Oct. 27.

“I believe we are ready to see a major inflection point in truckload transportation. We can’t continue to operate the way we are and believe it is a sustainable model,” Finkbiner said.

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