newsworthy
sive truck congestion at border crossings. Shipping by
intermodal also avoids the time-consuming scenario of
handing off trailers to different drivers at the border.
In addition, intermodal theft is virtually nonexistent
because the doors of the lower container on a double-stack
train cannot be opened while in the well car and the upper
container is more than 15 feet off the ground.
Still, only 5 percent of cross-border truck service that
could be converted has actually shifted, Filter said.
Intermodal “should be growing much faster than it is,” he
added.
Intermodal accounts for about 30 percent of privately
held Schneider’s $3.5 billion in annual revenue. It has
become an increasingly larger component of Schneider’s
overall product mix, Filter said.
A good chunk of intermodal’s growth is coming from
traffic that once moved over the highway but has now been
converted to rail. About one-quarter of Schneider’s new
intermodal business from shippers involves an over-the-road conversion, according to Filter.
The modal shift has intensified in the past two or three
years as shippers and trucking companies themselves con-
front a range of issues—from highway congestion to a
shortage of qualified drivers to escalating fuel, labor, and
truck equipment costs. Those elements have only amplified
intermodal’s traditional cost, fuel, and environmental
advantages.
Intermodal has a 9.5-percent market share of domestic
dry van-type movements traveling 550 miles or longer,
according to FTR, a consultancy. That represents a 0.1-per-
cent increase per calendar quarter during the past two
years, it said.
Intermodal is still used mostly for long-haul movements.
The average intermodal haul is about 1,430 miles, though
the distance is decreasing, according to FTR data. The overall length of haul is skewed by long-distance moves from
the West Coast to the Midwest, where there aren’t many big
population centers in between. However, in the more
densely populated eastern half of the United States, railroads are operating intermodal service at lengths of haul
between 550 and 750 miles and are doing so with a greater
degree of reliability. Most of intermodal’s growth, and its
greatest potential, lies in the shorter-haul traffic lanes in the
East, according to experts at the NITL conference.
Filter said Schneider regularly uses intermodal service
between Chambersburg, Pa., and Chicago, a distance of
about 700 miles. Its primary eastern rail partner for
intermodal, CSX Transportation, a unit of CSX
Corp., performs the run with a high degree of reliability, he said. Because of the railroads’ investments in infrastructure and equipment, they are
doing a better job than ever on shorter-haul lanes.
As a result, Schneider is pushing for more under-
1,000-mile traffic to move by intermodal.
Anthony B. Hatch, a long-time rail analyst and
currently head of a consulting company that bears
his name, predicted at the conference that increased
intermodal traffic would spark a second “rail renaissance.” The first so-called renaissance began in
2004 as the carriers wrested pricing power from
shippers and rail service levels started to show significant improvement.
Hatch said private and publicly held railroads will
devote more of their enormous capital expenditures on track and equipment—which are expected
to reach $13 billion by the end of 2013—to inter-modal. He added that intermodal would receive
greater focus as the railroads scale back investments
in their coal transportation business, which still
generates the biggest share of overall revenues. Coal
demand has been hurt by competition from lower-cost, cleaner-burning natural gas and by environmental regulations that have discouraged electric
utilities from building coal-fired plants or maintaining and upgrading existing ones. ;
—Mark Solomon
Crowley Maritime Corp. was
awarded 100 Certificates of
Environmental Achievement for
2013, more than any other company, by the Chamber of Shipping
of America. … Material handling
company Intelligrated has been named a 2013 Inc. Hire Power
Award winner. The awards recognize private businesses that have
generated the most jobs in the past 18 months. … Seegrid, a
robotics company, was awarded the Gold Medal Award at the
WBT Innovation Marketplace 2013 competitive event. … UTi
Worldwide, a global supply chain services and solutions company,
received the Innovation Award from the Sam’s Club import logistics team for improving the fixed racking storage in the warehouse
club’s Charleston, S.C., distribution center. … Wynright Corp. has
been named the winner of the NextGen Game Changer Award for
its Robotic Truck Unloader. … Mia Angellotti Allen, vice president
and co-founder of Rose Pallet, has been selected as an honoree in
The Daily Herald Business Ledger’s 16th Annual Influential Women
in Business awards program. … XRS Corp., a provider of mobile
trucking intelligence, was awarded the top prize in the Mobile
Technologies category for the 2013 Tekne Awards. … Andrews
Logistics, an asset-based transportation and logistics company, has
received the Bulk Carrier of the Year Award from BP Lubricants.
accolades
CROWLEY MARITIME CORP.
