Yes it is, Brian.
In fact, intermodal passed coal in 2013 as railroads’ biggest revenue source.
In 2014, U.S. railroads tacked more than a half million intermodal loads onto their 2013 totals, notching a record 13.5 million shipments.
Intermodal is likely to become even more significant in coming years as the industry spends money to convert truck moves to rail hauls.
How can railroads do it? It’s simple:
A pair of rails and two crew members hauling 300 containers is more efficient than 300 separate trucks and drivers.
Because of this, railroads enjoy about 40 percent of the long-haul market.
But most moves are shorter than West Coast to Chicago runs on BNSF and Union Pacific.
On those shorter runs, trucks have a natural advantage.
The gray area between long and short hauls—550 to 750 miles—along with long-distance moves of things such as fruits and vegetables and electronics are where the competition between road and rail is most fierce.
After peaking in 2006, U.S. container and trailer traffic sank during the Great Recession.
Consumer goods lagged and trucking companies undercut rail rates. But the truckers could not keep that up for long.
Their costs kept growing along with the price of fuel.
Moving containers by the train is nearly four times more fuel-efficient than trucking, so when diesel fuel prices rise, rail service looks even better.
Trucking company J. B. Hunt leads the way in taking advantage of rail.
Hunt has shifted resources from over-the-road trucking to arranging intermodal shipments and providing logistics services.
Hunt’s Intermodal division carried 1.7 million loads in its 73,000 trailers and containers in 2014, most sporting a green “Intermodal” logo.
Hunt’s over-the-road division is shrinking as the company evolves into a supply chain manager for its customers.
Hunt works mostly with BNSF Railway in the West and Norfolk Southern in the East.
With the migration of manufacturing to Asia and elsewhere, steamship lines became the railroads’ primary source of intermodal business, disgorging millions of containers onto stack trains.
And when it comes time to send the containers back overseas, Americans and Canadians are loading them with grain, recycled goods, and luxury items.
The number of containers moving through North American ports is more than triple what it was in 1990.
There’s a big question mark ahead, too: How will the expanded Panama Canal affect shipping patterns.
We posed this question to BNSF’s Matt Rose in 2013 and here’s what he told us.
The standard domestic container is nearly uniform at 53 feet long with dimensions that intentionally replicate the standard size and capacity of an over-the-road trailer.
That way, shippers don’t have to modify their loading patterns to use railroads as part of their supply chain.
Looking to squeeze every ounce of profitability out of a haul, trucking companies and trailer owners have mostly phased out the 48-foot domestic boxes that were once so common.
International containers however, continue to come in smaller sizes.
These are often 20, 40, 45, and 48 feet in length and are have slightly narrower dimensions than domestic boxes.
Foreign goods in international containers are often transloaded to 53-foot domestic equipment after reaching North America for delivery to inland warehouses.
RoadRailer is the innovative and unconventional cousin in intermodal railroading. It’s a system that uses Semi-trailers riding on rail trucks.
There’s no car for the trailers to ride on so there’s no platform train to carry, but the trailers do have to be rugged.
Norfolk Southern is the only major railroad using RoadRailers and they run in certain lanes on NS like these in Pennsylvania and Kentucky.
Trucks will continue to dominate North American freight transportation since most freight moves relatively short distances or requires expedited service that intermodal and other rail alternatives can’t match.
Investment in intermodal-related improvements demonstrates that container movements by rail are likely to resume their long-term growth as the economy expands.
That’s why you’ll see more stack trains on a track near you.
