Spotlight the pandemic-era peak. J. B. Hunt Transport Services, the largest US domestic intermodal provider, said rates are rising on major US lanes traveling west to east, particularly out of Southern California, but are flat or down elsewhere. Schneider National, the third-largest domestic intermodal provider,“ expected flat pricing in 2025, and it ultimately played out that way,” CEO Mark Rourke said during the Journal of Commerce Inland Distribution Conference in Chicago. Taylor Harrington, director of C. H. Robinson’ s intermodal division, said a modest uptick in pricing is possible in early 2026, but it probably won’ t be enough to offset rising costs.“ Inflationary costs could be 4 % or 5 %, but the question becomes: can carriers recover 1 %? Can they recover 2 %?” Harrington said at the conference.“ It’ ll vary shipper by shipper and lane by lane, but it’ ll be tough to recover all of it.”
Trump mining order offers breakbulk growth
US President Donald Trump’ s executive order accelerating permitting and investment in the mining of critical minerals will give the breakbulk and project-cargo sectors a shot in the arm. In March, Trump signed an executive order to increase domestic minerals
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production as a national security priority. The order is part of the administration’ s overall efforts to reduce US dependence on overseas minerals suppliers— and particularly from China, the world’ s dominant exporter of critical minerals. Since April, the Trump administration has added 25 mineral projects to a federal fast-track permitting list. One of those projects took a major step forward on Sept. 19, when the US Forest Service gave
mining company Perpetua Resources the green light to move ahead with its Stibnite Gold Project in central Idaho following over eight years of permitting reviews. The project involves redeveloping an abandoned mine in the Stibnite mining district to extract gold and other materials. Among those materials contained in the mine is the raw ore of antimony sulfide, a key component of nearly 30 % of military ammunition items, according to the US Army. Once operations resume, the site would become the only domestically mined source of antimony. Construction to redevelop the mine is on track to begin this fall, pending the finalization of bonding with state and federal regulators.
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