Winners and Losers in the Intermodal Shipping Boom

The entire intermodal freight network in North America has been going through a course of restructuring in the past decade that has seen and certainly will continue to see sweeping shifts within the way that goods are transported across the continent. Other factors like rising fuel prices are forcing many transport companies to find the best method to transport goods. To complement this infrastructure improvement there’s been a corresponding investment within the rail networks over the United States that is aimed toward increasing the efficacy of the freight transport community. These changes mean that there are going to be some companies that are set to benefit from the new interest in intermodal services but there’ll also be many losers who cannot compete using their present methods. For the large part the companies that will gain the most are the railways which have earned themselves the most suitable for intermodal transportation strategies. Large railroads like Union and CSX Pacific have dealt in much of their coal – replaced it with container cars and taking rolling stock as a long term strategy of diversification. At once, many of the larger trucking companies that have focused on finding a market in the intermodal network also have benefitted from these enhancements to the infrastructure. In regional sections of the nation where the intermodal network is thinnest there are also possibilities for growth and trucking giants like Con-way are looking for methods to expand their reach into places for example Mexico. At the opposite end-of the continent delivery times have been reduced and the current intermodal network is being used to strengthen local economies while the primary network becomes more established. The primary losers within this raft of developments appears set to get the smaller trucking companies which do not possess the resources to contend with all the large intermodal cargo carriers. Against the pressures of increasing diesel costs, increased scrutiny of truck drivers’ working hours and the difficulties of greenhouse emissions it seems that the days of the relying almost exclusively on truck transportation could be numbered.