Mark Solomon joined DC VELOCITY as senior editor in August 2008, and was promoted to his current position on January 1, 2015. He has spent more than 30 years in the transportation, logistics and supply chain management fields as a journalist and public relations professional. From 1989 to 1994, he worked in Washington as a reporter for the Journal of Commerce, covering the aviation and trucking industries, the Department of Transportation, Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court. Prior to that, he worked for Traffic World for seven years in a similar role. From 1994 to 2008, Mr. Solomon ran Media-Based Solutions, a public relations firm based in Atlanta. He graduated in 1978 with a B.A. in journalism from The American University in Washington, D.C.
The nation's intermodal sector is like the 400-pound behemoth who vowed to lose 200 pounds and
now tips the scales at 210: Few thought it could be done, the progress has been remarkable, but those
last 10 pounds will be the hardest.
The "last 10 pounds" for the intermodal world is short-haul service, defined as 500 miles or less.
Historically the exclusive province of motor carriers, short distances are seen as "high-hanging fruit"
for railroads and intermodal marketing companies. Yet they could also be the most lucrative fruit of all
as most freight in the United States moves under 500 miles.
But it's not an easy nut to crack. While intermodal has made great strides to deliver a cost-effective
service in the 750- to 1,000-mile range, repeating those achievements at even shorter stage lengths will
be a struggle, experts say. An intermodal move—which typically involves the line-haul and a dray at both ends—is
nowhere near as flexible as tendering the goods to a regional trucker for a direct point-to-point move, especially for
distances between 300 and 500 miles. "At 400 miles, an intermodal move is very difficult," said an executive of an
intermodal marketing company whose loads for shipper customers usually ride about 1,000 miles.
While intermodal may be in shipping's secular sweet spot in terms of its current cost, fuel, and environmental
advantages over trucking, even its biggest proponents admit that it can only shrink stage lengths so far before
those advantages diminish.
Mark Davis, a partner at Cleveland Research Co. and a staunch believer in intermodal, said 550 miles is
realistically the shortest distance at which intermodal can be cost- and service-competitive with regional
truckload services. "Then again, they said intermodal could not hit 800 miles and be competitive, and they
are," Davis said earlier this week at the joint annual meeting of the National Industrial Transportation
League and the Intermodal Association of North America in Anaheim, Calif.
Even without the short haul market, intermodal still has room to grow, according to Davis. Of the 525 million
truckloads hauled by big rigs, or "Class 8" trucks, about 45 million are still potentially convertible to intermodal
service, according to Cleveland Research Data. Davis said intermodal's greatest opportunity lies in the 750-mile distance.
FEC'S SUCCESS
Not everyone, however, is skeptical of intermodal's ability to make inroads in the short-haul market.
"You can make money in short-haul intermodal," said James R. Hertwig, president and CEO of Florida East
Coast Railway (FEC), a Jacksonville, Fla.-based regional railroad that operates 351 miles of track from
Jacksonville to Miami. Hertwig said that intermodal accounts for 78 percent of FEC's total traffic. Of that
intermodal total, 42 percent moves under 350 miles, and it is profitable, Hertwig told a breakfast meeting
at the joint conference in Anaheim.
FEC is a prototype of a successful short-haul intermodal model. It is the dominant railroad in Florida, has a
relatively small geographic network, and supports a consumer market of 19 million people (12 million of them from
central Florida down to the Keys).
In other words, FEC has traffic density, and like almost everything in transportation, traffic density holds the
key to a profitable short-haul intermodal venture. Get the freight, scale the capacity, and the money will roll in.
Or so the concept goes. But unlike FEC, the rest of the country only has a select group of city-pairs, such as
Savannah-Atlanta, where volumes are robust enough for short-haul intermodal to work.
Also holding back the model, Hertwig said, is the shipping community's perception that intermodal is too unreliable
and involves too many "hand-offs" of the freight. Indeed, it is believed that reliable intermodal service at 800 miles
or shorter can only be consistently accomplished by one railroad and can't involve interlining. Though truckload services
are more expensive than intermodal, shippers know their freight will remain in one pair of hands until it reaches its
destination. "The key [to successful short-haul intermodal] is to provide truck-like service," Hertwig said.
In addition, the drayage portion must be priced effectively and have near flawless pick-up and delivery performance in
order for intermodal to provide a value offering that is superior to over-the-road trucking, analysts have said. As a
result, short-haul intermodal stands a better chance of success if the pickup or delivery is at a port location where
there is virtually no drayage involved.
SHIPPERS INTERESTED BUT SKEPTICAL
In the past few years, shippers have been making greater use of intermodal. For example, Fernando Cortes, senior vice president of Dallas-based Dr. Pepper Snapple Group, said that in the past five years, his company has tripled its use of intermodal at distances of 500 miles and longer.
Many shippers would like to use even more intermodal, especially as federal government regulations designed to make the highways safer make it harder and more expensive to find drivers and increased road congestion
threatens their time-to-market commitments.
However, Rick Smith, vice president, transportation of Hoffman Estates, Ill.-based retailer Sears Holdings Corp., is
still hesitant to switch to intermodal for short haul. Smith told the gathering in Anaheim that railroads would be
hard-pressed to hit high service standards for 500- to 800-mile lengths of haul. "It will be difficult to meet, and
it will be the next big hurdle," Smith said.
Smith said concerns about the interchange of traffic and the cost and reliability of dray are the reasons that the
performance of short-haul intermodal lags behind Sears' expectations.
Warehouse automation orders declined by 3% in 2024, according to a February report from market research firm Interact Analysis. The company said the decline was due to economic, political, and market-specific challenges, including persistently high interest rates in many regions and the residual effects of an oversupply of warehouses built during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The research also found that increasing competition from Chinese vendors is expected to drive down prices and slow revenue growth over the report’s forecast period to 2030.
Global macro-economic factors such as high interest rates, political uncertainty around elections, and the Chinese real estate crisis have “significantly impacted sales cycles, slowing the pace of orders,” according to the report.
Despite the decline, analysts said growth is expected to pick up from 2025, which they said they anticipate will mark a year of slow recovery for the sector. Pre-pandemic growth levels are expected to return in 2026, with long-term expansion projected at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8% between 2024 and 2030.
The analysis also found two market segments that are bucking the trend: durable manufacturing and food & beverage industries continued to spend on automation during the downturn. Warehouse automation revenues in food & beverage, in particular, were bolstered by cold-chain automation, as well as by large-scale projects from consumer-packaged goods (CPG) manufacturers. The sectors registered the highest growth in warehouse automation revenues between 2022 and 2024, with increases of 11% (durable manufacturing) and 10% (food & beverage), according to the research.
The Swedish supply chain software company Kodiak Hub is expanding into the U.S. market, backed by a $6 million venture capital boost for its supplier relationship management (SRM) platform.
The Stockholm-based company says its move could help U.S. companies build resilient, sustainable supply chains amid growing pressure from regulatory changes, emerging tariffs, and increasing demands for supply chain transparency.
According to the company, its platform gives procurement teams a 360-degree view of supplier risk, resiliency, and performance, helping them to make smarter decisions faster. Kodiak Hub says its artificial intelligence (AI) based tech has helped users to reduce supplier onboarding times by 80%, improve supplier engagement by 90%, achieve 7-10% cost savings on total spend, and save approximately 10 hours per week by automating certain SRM tasks.
The Swedish venture capital firm Oxx had a similar message when it announced in November that it would back Kodiak Hub with new funding. Oxx says that Kodiak Hub is a better tool for chief procurement officers (CPOs) and strategic sourcing managers than existing software platforms like Excel sheets, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, or Procure-to-Pay suites.
“As demand for transparency and fair-trade practices grows, organizations must strengthen their supply chains to protect their reputation, profitability, and long-term trust,” Malin Schmidt, founder & CEO of Kodiak Hub, said in a release. “By embedding AI-driven insights directly into procurement workflows, our platform helps procurement teams anticipate these risks and unlock major opportunities for growth.”
Here's our monthly roundup of some of the charitable works and donations by companies in the material handling and logistics space.
For the sixth consecutive year, dedicated contract carriage and freight management services provider Transervice Logistics Inc. collected books, CDs, DVDs, and magazines for Book Fairies, a nonprofit book donation organization in the New York Tri-State area. Transervice employees broke their own in-house record last year by donating 13 boxes of print and video assets to children in under-resourced communities on Long Island and the five boroughs of New York City.
Logistics real estate investment and development firm Dermody Properties has recognized eight community organizations in markets where it operates with its 2024 Annual Thanksgiving Capstone awards. The organizations, which included food banks and disaster relief agencies, received a combined $85,000 in awards ranging from $5,000 to $25,000.
Prime Inc. truck driver Dee Sova has donated $5,000 to Harmony House, an organization that provides shelter and support services to domestic violence survivors in Springfield, Missouri. The donation follows Sova's selection as the 2024 recipient of the Trucking Cares Foundation's John Lex Premier Achievement Award, which was accompanied by a $5,000 check to be given in her name to a charity of her choice.
Employees of dedicated contract carrier Lily Transportation donated dog food and supplies to a local animal shelter at a holiday event held at the company's Fort Worth, Texas, location. The event, which benefited City of Saginaw (Texas) Animal Services, was coordinated by "Lily Paws," a dedicated committee within Lily Transportation that focuses on improving the lives of shelter dogs nationwide.
Freight transportation conglomerate Averitt has continued its support of military service members by participating in the "10,000 for the Troops" card collection program organized by radio station New Country 96.3 KSCS in Dallas/Fort Worth. In 2024, Averitt associates collected and shipped more than 18,000 holiday cards to troops overseas. Contributions included cards from 17 different Averitt facilities, primarily in Texas, along with 4,000 cards from the company's corporate office in Cookeville, Tennessee.
Electric vehicle (EV) sales have seen slow and steady growth, as the vehicles continue to gain converts among consumers and delivery fleet operators alike. But a consistent frustration for drivers has been pulling up to a charging station only to find that the charger has been intentionally broken or disabled.
To address that threat, the EV charging solution provider ChargePoint has launched two products to combat charger vandalism.
The first is a cut-resistant charging cable that's designed to deter theft. The cable, which incorporates what the manufacturer calls "novel cut-resistant materials," is substantially more difficult for would-be vandals to cut but is still flexible enough for drivers to maneuver comfortably, the California firm said. ChargePoint intends to make its cut-resistant cables available for all of its commercial and fleet charging stations, and, starting in the middle of the year, will license the cable design to other charging station manufacturers as part of an industrywide effort to combat cable theft and vandalism.
The second product, ChargePoint Protect, is an alarm system that detects charging cable tampering in real time and literally sounds the alarm using the charger's existing speakers, screens, and lighting system. It also sends SMS or email messages to ChargePoint customers notifying them that the system's alarm has been triggered.
ChargePoint says it expects these two new solutions, when combined, will benefit charging station owners by reducing station repair costs associated with vandalism and EV drivers by ensuring they can trust charging stations to work when and where they need them.
New Jersey is home to the most congested freight bottleneck in the country for the seventh straight year, according to research from the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI), released today.
ATRI’s annual list of the Top 100 Truck Bottlenecks aims to highlight the nation’s most congested highways and help local, state, and federal governments target funding to areas most in need of relief. The data show ways to reduce chokepoints, lower emissions, and drive economic growth, according to the researchers.
The 2025 Top Truck Bottleneck List measures the level of truck-involved congestion at more than 325 locations on the national highway system. The analysis is based on an extensive database of freight truck GPS data and uses several customized software applications and analysis methods, along with terabytes of data from trucking operations, to produce a congestion impact ranking for each location. The bottleneck locations detailed in the latest ATRI list represent the top 100 congested locations, although ATRI continuously monitors more than 325 freight-critical locations, the group said.
For the seventh straight year, the intersection of I-95 and State Route 4 near the George Washington Bridge in Fort Lee, New Jersey, is the top freight bottleneck in the country. The remaining top 10 bottlenecks include: Chicago, I-294 at I-290/I-88; Houston, I-45 at I-69/US 59; Atlanta, I-285 at I-85 (North); Nashville: I-24/I-40 at I-440 (East); Atlanta: I-75 at I-285 (North); Los Angeles, SR 60 at SR 57; Cincinnati, I-71 at I-75; Houston, I-10 at I-45; and Atlanta, I-20 at I-285 (West).
ATRI’s analysis, which utilized data from 2024, found that traffic conditions continue to deteriorate from recent years, partly due to work zones resulting from increased infrastructure investment. Average rush hour truck speeds were 34.2 miles per hour (MPH), down 3% from the previous year. Among the top 10 locations, average rush hour truck speeds were 29.7 MPH.
In addition to squandering time and money, these delays also waste fuel—with trucks burning an estimated 6.4 billion gallons of diesel fuel and producing more than 65 million metric tons of additional carbon emissions while stuck in traffic jams, according to ATRI.
On a positive note, ATRI said its analysis helps quantify the value of infrastructure investment, pointing to improvements at Chicago’s Jane Byrne Interchange as an example. Once the number one truck bottleneck in the country for three years in a row, the recently constructed interchange saw rush hour truck speeds improve by nearly 25% after construction was completed, according to the report.
“Delays inflicted on truckers by congestion are the equivalent of 436,000 drivers sitting idle for an entire year,” ATRI President and COO Rebecca Brewster said in a statement announcing the findings. “These metrics are getting worse, but the good news is that states do not need to accept the status quo. Illinois was once home to the top bottleneck in the country, but following a sustained effort to expand capacity, the Jane Byrne Interchange in Chicago no longer ranks in the top 10. This data gives policymakers a road map to reduce chokepoints, lower emissions, and drive economic growth.”