Commentary Land Lines

By Larry Gross

Roughly 60 % of all North American intermodal activity is directly linked to the continent’ s trade with other nations. This international business includes both intact movement of ISO containers and cargo transloaded from ISO boxes to domestic equipment.

The recent actions of the Trump administration have once again brought home the fact that intermodal has little control over its fortunes in the international sector. Clearly, the world is changing under intermodal’ s feet. But there’ s not much use in making predictions when reality seems to be changing by the hour. This is not the time to take risks or make big decisions. Rather, it appears appropriate to keep one’ s powder dry and wait for the dust to begin to settle, and for the new reality, whatever it is, to begin to come into focus.

But beyond the international situation lies the other 40 %, domestic intermodal, and the news regarding that sector is looking better. Of course, domestic intermodal is still subject to the vagaries of the long-haul truck market. Its destiny is tightly coupled with the demand for long-haul truck transport, a factor over which it has no control.

But that doesn’ t mean that domestic intermodal can’ t grow. The key is market share, and here the news is good.

According to Gross Transportation Consulting’ s estimates, domestic intermodal’ s share of the US long-haul trucking market— that is, intra-US dry-van and refrigerated truckloads moving least 500 miles— has declined significantly in recent years.

Determining the total number of truck moves within the US is a tall order, given the fragmented nature of the truckload sector. For this, we used data produced by Noel Perry and his firm, Transport Futures; Perry derives his numbers from economic data. The intermodal figures are from the Intermodal Association of North America’ s ETSO database and include only those revenue moves of domestic containers and trailers that both originate and terminate within the US.

Intermodal service has displayed admirable resilience, but this resiliency is going to be tested.

While we can’ t be absolutely sure how close the calculated absolute level of loads is to reality, the more important aspect is the trend, which will determine whether intermodal share is rising or falling.

From its peak in 2018, during the electronic logging device( ELD)-related truck capacity

Domestic intermodal share is rising from a low of 6 % in Q4 2022 but remains below 2018 levels. Shutterstock. com

52 Journal of Commerce | April 7, 2025 www. joc. com