By Rip Watson, Senior Reporter This story appears in the Nov. 12 print edition of Transport Topics.
Intermodal shipments rose 3.2% in the third quarter, putting that portion of the freight business on course for a record year, the Intermodal Association of North America reported.
The trade group’s third-quarter report issued Nov. 5 showed a 5.8% rise in domestic shipments and a 0.9% improvement in international freight to 3.77 million moves, from 3.65 million the year before.
The result marks the 12th consecutive quarter of year-over-year volume improvement.
Through three quarters, truck/rail shipments totaled 10.96 million. Matching last year’s fourth-quarter total of 3.6 million loads would push the full-year total to 14.56 million, 2% above the best-ever year of 2006.
“The story remains the same, but the outcome is anything but boring to intermodal players,” said the report from IANA, Calverton, Md. “Even as the U.S. economy slipped a notch over the summer, intermodal continued to forge ahead on surging domestic gains and slowly improving international volume. And all signs point to intermodal strength extending into 2013.”
“This is particularly impressive in an economy where manufacturing output was clearly gearing down,” IANA said.
Over three quarters, intermodal shipment growth was 4.7%, outpacing American Trucking Associations’ tonnage growth of 3.6%. Actual truck shipment growth is below 3.6% because of an increase in heavier loads, such as flatbed freight, which inflates the tonnage total.
Domestic container growth was fastest in the Northeast and Midwest, where increases reached almost 15% and 11.3%, respectively. IANA’s results include the United States and Canada, and are based on rail shipments.
“Domestic volume growth likely comes from an increase in market share, as more freight is shifted from both over-the-road trucking and trailers,” the report said. “Domestic containers have substantial room to gain share in most U.S. regions.”
The increase of 143,000 domestic container shipments exceeded the overall growth of 126,000 loads on a year-over-year basis.
Customers continued to shift to domestic containers from trailers in the quarter, as total trailer shipments fell 11%.
