Intermodal’s Moment Could Gain Momentum

Lee Klaskow (0:07)

Hi, everyone, this is Lee Klaskow when we're talking transports. Welcome to Bloomberg Intelligence Talking Transports podcast. I'm your host, Lee Klaskow, Senior Freight Transportation and Logistics Analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, Bloomberg's in-house research arm. Before we dive in a quick favor, if you enjoy the podcast, please take a moment to follow, rate, review, and share it with a friend or colleague. Your support helps us continue bringing you conversations with the leaders shaping transportation and logistics. And if you'd like to connect, you can find me on the Bloomberg Terminal on LinkedIn or on X at Logistics Lee. One of the biggest growth opportunities for North America freight rail is taking more freight off the highways and putting it on trains. The opportunity sounds straightforward, but delivering a competitive intermodal product requires railroad, trucking companies, terminals, equipment providers, 3PLs, and shippers to all work together.

Joining us today is Anne Reinke, President and CEO of the Intermodal Association of North America, or IANA, which represents stakeholders from across the intermodal ecosystem. Today, we'll discuss the outlook for intermodal and what's driving truck-to-rail conversion, the barriers preventing even greater adoption, and what the industry needs to do to win meaningful share from trucking. We'll also talk about infrastructure technology, Thank you for watching. What market is headed over the next several years?

Welcome to Talking Transports.

Anne Reinke (1:28)

Lee, it is always wonderful to be with you, even if we're not in the same room.

Lee Klaskow (1:32)

I appreciate that, and it's great to see you. And I understand you guys had a huge conference recently. Can you first... Tell the folks, what is IANA all about? And then let's.

Dive into the... Sure.

Anne Reinke (1:46)

So as you said, Iana, the Intermodal Association of North America, represents all of the intermodal stakeholders, we're the industry authority as it relates to intermodal.

And as you noted, there are a lot of stakeholders. We have railroads as members, motor carriers, ocean carriers and marine terminals, 3PLs and IMCs, and then equipment and technology providers. We also have our beneficial cargo owners, the folk who benefit from all of this transportation. So it's about 1,000 members. We're at this point, I think, 36 years old. And we educate, we advocate, we provide networking opportunities and facilitate both business intelligence and business tools. Like, you're world famous, you know this, Lee, the Uniform Intermodal Interchange Agreement.

You know all about that, right?

Lee Klaskow (2:43)

Absolutely. It's great reading. That's what I do on the weekends. I know very little about it. So are you going to explain it to me and our listeners?

Anne Reinke (2:52)

Yeah, sure. Let's not make it the focus of our conversation, but I can talk about it.

Lee Klaskow (2:59)

We don't want people driving off the road, so let's...

Anne Reinke (3:02)

So the way that equipment is interchanged is pretty sophisticated, right? And there's various different owners and stakeholders. There's chassis, there's containers. You have your equipment providers and you have your motor carriers. And so that universe is complicated. And so we have an agreement that essentially provides the rules of the road for how that equipment is changed between hands, between all the partners that I just mentioned. We've been doing that for longer than the organization was in existence. It used to be this one other group that we merged with.

And thank God for that because without it, I don't know who would be taking that control, who would actually be providing this sort of third party neutrality of making sure all the things work together.

Lee Klaskow (3:49)

All right, great. For those that are still awake, that are listening.

Anne Reinke (3:53)

I think that was pretty short.

Lee Klaskow (3:55)

I don't think that was long. I'm teasing.

So, IANA has its annual conference recently. Can you just talk about some of the major takeaways? And maybe just generally speaking, what is the state of the intermodal market right now? I know that's kind of two questions, but I think they're over each other. Yes, they do. Yeah, crossover.

Anne Reinke (4:17)

So, the overarching takeaway right now is that we're in an intermodal moment, and we will get to all the reasons why later on in this program, I believe.

But if we're in an intermodal moment, how do we change that? And I'm going to have to credit Noel Hasegaba with this phrase. How do we change that into intermodal momentum? So, cycles have been with us before. Business cycles have been with us before with the intermodal industry. And yet, as soon as costs go down on the over-the-road side, on the trucking marketplace, people and customers leave intermodal. So, that was certainly one of the huge thematics. Of course, there are AI challenges, and we're going to talk about that. How do we embrace the technology without being taken over or overrun or spending needlessly on it? And there's a huge merger that is being applied for. And so, that was a focus of our conversations. We had both Katie Farmer from BNSF, who is anti-merger, and Jim Venna from the Union Pacific, who is pro-merger. They spoke one after the other on our main stage. And so, you can imagine they have completely different takes on how, in particular, how to grow and sustain growth in intermodal.