MEETING THE MOMENT: DCLI Is Investing to Support Intermodal Growth
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MEETING THE MOMENT: DCLI Is Investing to Support Intermodal Growth
The domestic intermodal market is experiencing significant growth for the first time in years, and all stakeholders need to step up if we are going to“ meet this moment”— a key theme during this year’ s IANA EXPO conference. At DCLI, we are fully committed to helping railroads and their customers grow their businesses and support this surge in demand. As customers seek more flexible and cost-effective transportation solutions, we continue to make the investments in our fleet necessary to move more containerized goods via intermodal rail.
Our DCL53 chassis pool serves as an important enabler of intermodal operations, and we have a proven track record of multi-billion-dollar investments to expand and modernize that fleet. In recent years, DCLI has added more than 40,000 new 53-foot chassis to ensure we remain ahead of the growth curve to serve our customers.
But success requires more than just having readily available equipment. DCLI has also invested in our people, technology, and operational infrastructure. We are nearly finished with the process of equipping our entire domestic chassis fleet – more than 150,000 units – with GPS, giving us real-time asset tracking that will enhance visibility for our internal operations, rail providers, and customers while ensuring access to high-quality assets. These capabilities position us to operate more efficiently and enable growth.
We believe this growth signals a lasting shift in the domestic intermodal market, not just a temporary surge in demand. Major retailers, manufacturers, and logistics providers are increasingly recognizing that domestic intermodal offers resilience, predictability, and sustainability benefits that over-the-road trucking alone cannot match. This structural shift in how companies approach supply chains plays directly to our strengths.
Intermodal growth is back, and DCLI is committed to providing the chassis capacity needed to support it for the long term. We have the financial resources to make fleet investments and will spend what is needed to support as much growth as the industry can continue to generate. Our approach has always been not just to react to demand but instead to build the capacity we need ahead of it and then capitalize when it comes. Our expanded chassis fleet, strengthened operational capabilities, technology investments, and strategic partnerships across the intermodal ecosystem give us confidence that we can help capture( and keep) this new business.
The work we’ re doing today on our DCL53 chassis solution will ensure that DCLI remains the partner of choice for domestic intermodal in the years ahead.