Schneider to Expand Intermodal
In a keynote address at the International Intermodal Expo, the company’s president, Donald J. Schneider, said intermodal will far exceed the rate of growth compared with the rest of his truck fleet.
“I see many more opportunities to take trucks off the road,” Schneider said, noting that offering both truck and rail service gives his customers greater flexibility.
His comments represent a major plug for the intermodal industry, which saw business fall off in 1997 and 1998 because of poor service and rail system congestion. It also puts Schneider in closer competition with
J.B.Hunt entered the intermodal market en mass by converting practically its entire fleet to multimodal containers in the mid-1990s. Though the company expects an acceleration in its intermodal business this year, the carrier is adding more truck capacity than intermodal capacity (4-19, p. 1).
Schneider, based in Green Bay, Wis., had revenue of $2.7 billion in 1998; but it refused to say how much of that business was intermodal.
Schneider said he is “mode-neutral” when it comes to moving freight. “You would be crazy not to be,” he said, “because the market will tell you if you are biased one way or the other.”
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