Surface Transportation
More than 85 % of IMCs said customers shifted freight from trucks to intermodal in H1, up from 10.9 % in H2 2025. Al Drago / Getty Images
shippers surveyed shifted freight to intermodal during the first half, up sharply from 17.5 % in late 2025.
But the survey and railroad operating data also showed pressure building around train speeds, equipment availability, drayage capacity, and on-time performance.
Service slippage
UP received 42.6 % of the vote when respondents were asked to identify the best performing railroad. However, the detailed scorecard produced a slightly different result, as BNSF received an overall grade of 3.94 out of 5 points, narrowly above UP’ s 3.92. BNSF received the highest scores for ingating and outgating containers, while UP led the railroads in transit performance.
Several respondents credited UP for becoming more aggressive in pursuing truckload conversions to rail.
“ UP has been very competitive on truckload conversion freight,” one respondent wrote.“ Transits have improved in most lanes. UP also has been more proactive than they have in years past.”
While BNSF received strong marks for terminal execution, its train speed declined 7 % year over year during the final eight weeks of the first half, the largest decrease among Class I railroads. BNSF’ s on-time performance fell to 73 % in
Soaring truck rates push freight to intermodal
Q: What W modal conversions have your customers made in the last six months?
Percentage of vote
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Source: Journal of Commerce survey
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June for one survey respondent, while another said longer transit times required the company to use more containers to move the same amount of freight.
Norfolk Southern Railway slowed late in the quarter, with its intermodal train speeds declining 5.1 % year over year during the final eight weeks of H1. CSX Transportation was also viewed as broadly dependable, although its train speeds declined late in the quarter, similar to its rival NS. Neither eastern US railroad, nor the Canadian railroads, scored as highly in the survey as the western US rails.
Slower service on the US intermodal network in June has been isolated to parts of the intermodal map, not necessarily the whole system.
Canadian Pacific Kansas City( CPKC) remained the lowest-rated railroad for the third consecutive survey. Many customers criticize how long CPKC takes to move loads from Calgary and Edmonton to places such as Toronto because the containers sit at origin for days before getting on a train. Others complained about how long it took to get empties from eastern Canada back to western Canada, pushing customers back to long-haul trucking. Some survey respondents were upset with slow operations in CPKC Bensenville, a terminal near O’ Hare International Airport in Chicago.
Frayed drayage
J. B. Hunt received 45.2 % of the vote for best-performing IMC, the most for any provider, but down from 55.9 % last fall. Asset-light, non-asset and other IMCs finished just behind at 43.3 %.
Shippers, however, highlighted two areas of concern: a decline in on-time pickups and deliveries and a rise in tender rejections. Drayage was cited as a major concern.
“ We’ re leaning in to grow our dray capacity,” Jim Filter, CEO of Schneider, said on a July 30 earnings call.“ We’ ve already had some success, but most of that growth in our dray capacity occurred at the end of the [ second ] quarter.”
Nevertheless, it dragged on overall satisfaction in the latest survey. Approximately 88.7 % of customers said they were satisfied with J. B. Hunt’ s performance, down from 93.3 % last fall.
“ Technology-wise they are up front and a leader,” one shipper wrote about J. B. Hunt.“ What holds them back [ right now ] is their drayage.”
Dissatisfaction with tender rejections also showed up in the results, with 85.5 % of shippers said J. B. Hunt met their expectations for tender acceptance, down from 100 % in the Fall 2025 survey, and 69.1 % said Hub Group met those expectations, down from 85.7 %. Schneider saw a nearly identical drop to Hub Group.
Shippers noted that intermodal conversions require railroads and IMCs to provide equipment, drayage capacity, and on-time pickup and deliveries, not simply replacing one rejection with another.
Winning freight from trucking is only the first step. Keeping it will require railroads and IMCs to be able to absorb higher volumes without performance suffering, thus demonstrating to shippers that intermodal is not sliding back toward the unreliable service of 2021 and 2022.
email: ari. ashe @ spglobal. com
42 Journal of Commerce | September 7, 2026 www. joc. com