The following blog post is written by guest blogger, Dr. Michael S. Yoder.

Followers of business and economic media, especially that which is oriented toward transportation, are likely to encounter the term “intermodal” on a daily basis.  The COVID-19 pandemic is associated with notable disruptions in production supply chains and in shipments of raw materials and finished goods, shedding light on the role of intermodal freight transport.  Furthermore, the Ever Given, the giant container ship that ran aground in the Suez Canal in late March 2021, blocking all shipment through the canal for several days, has attracted the attention of economic developers interested in the vulnerabilities of global shipments of manufactured goods, components, parts, and even crops and raw materials that involve intermodal or transload activities at some point. In short, the transfer of cargo from one shipping mode to another remains crucial despite the pandemic-related global economic downturn.

As a starting point, I will briefly define and describe intermodal freight transport and a related concept, transload activity.  In its simplest form, intermodal shipping is the movement of freight by two or more transportation modes: truck, ship, rail, or aircraft. All too often, however, the term is loosely used.  The most widely accepted definition refers specifically to the transfer of shipping containers, and yet, the transfer between different transport modes of bulk cargoes not shipped in containers, referred to as transloading, is often included among examples of intermodal shipping. The imprecise mixing of concepts is done mostly for the purposes of promoting a given transfer facility, or a highway that might link up with one or more rail lines.   Bulk cargoes include steel coils, rods and bars, grains, timber and pulp, sand, fertilizers, and “aggregates” which are construction materials like asphalt and gravel.  These loads are often transferred between barge, truck or rail, but such processes technically do not constitute intermodal shipments when no shipping containers are involved.

I first became interested in the topic of intermodal facilities while researching cargo transport infrastructure in the Fort Smith area and in the interior of Mexico.  In both cases I was interested in ways, either currently existing or planned, that these places link up with maritime ports and other larger transshipment centers. In the Mexican case, such facilities in San Luís Potosí, Silao (in the State of Guanajuato), and Monterrey are referred to as “puertos secos” (“dry ports”) and are regarded as important cargo handling sites that expand the reach of maritime container ports such as Altamira and Veracruz on the Gulf Coast, and Manzanillo and Lázaro Cárdenas on the Pacific Coast.  Those three dry ports function in much the same way as interior intermodal facilities in Chicago/Joliet, Dallas/Fort Worth, Memphis, Kansas City, and Charlotte, which transfer containers between rail and trucks, and ultimately link to large maritime ports such as Los Angeles/Long Beach, Oakland, Seattle, Savannah, and Norfolk. Upon researching the proposed “Ports-to-Plains” cargo corridor that is expected to link Mexico to Canada via West Texas and the Great Plains, I found that in the promotion of the corridor, stakeholders boast of “intermodal facilities” along the corridor.  I found, however, that only the border city of Laredo has the crane infrastructure, or “intermodal ramp,” to efficiently handle containers. The rest of the facilities along the corridor where truck and rail interface enable the transfer of bulk cargoes rather than containers. Such transload facilities of West Texas along Ports-to-Plains are located in Lubbock, Big Spring, and San Angelo, all three of which provide public-sector support for the facilities.

Photo by Dr. Yoder – a rail transload facility in Gonzales, TX

In Arkansas, most facilities that transfer cargo between different modes are adjacent or close to navigable rivers.  The Arkansas River ports of Van Buren, Fort Smith, Little Rock and Pine Bluff transfer bulk cargoes between barge and either rail or truck.  The only true functioning intermodal facility in the state is the large (600 acre) inland port at Marion, immediately west of Memphis, where containers are transferred between truck and rail. Port Little Rock has the capability to transfer containers between barge and either rail or truck, but that market does not yet exist. The facility is one of the largest in the state to handle bulk cargoes. Several stakeholders in transportation and economic development in the Fort Smith Metropolitan Area are actively trying to expand the handling capabilities of barges in Van Buren to include containers, and to transfer them between barge and either truck or rail.  I am told that years ago an intermodal ramp where containers were lifted by cranes to streamline cargo handling between rail and trucks, was operated by Kansas City Southern Railroad and located just west of the Oklahoma state line near Sallisaw, but it had been removed for insufficient demand, to the disappointment of economic developers and shippers desiring intermodal capabilities in western Arkansas.  To be successful, an expansion of the local cargo transport system to handle containers will require a high enough volume transported each year.  Time (and economic impact studies) will tell whether the large corporations of Northwest Arkansas can provide enough container traffic to sustain an intermodal facility, as proponents of the expanded Van Buren site expect.

Why would intermodal shipping, transloading, interior (dry) ports and related topics be of interest to economic developers and related stakeholders?  Site selectors continually emphasize that one of the first questions asked about localities under consideration for investment relates to transportation connectivity and infrastructure.  Many companies require that two or more transportation modes intersect close by.  The movements of bulk cargoes are maintaining their pre-pandemic momentum, in large part because of expected increases in construction, including the transport infrastructure touted by the Biden Administration.  The boom in e-commerce and goods shipped by containers will likely remain, which may very well result in new intermodal ramps to enhance linkages of the country’s interior with maritime container ports.  But the threshold number of containers necessary to sustain an intermodal facility is high, so such facilities tend to be spread out.    According to transport media, industrial park development is expected to expand in places close to both types of facilities to a greater extent as the economy recovers.  Communities seeking to propel their economic development ought to take note.

Dr. Michael S. Yoder
Research Fellow, Department of Geography and the Environment,
University of Texas at Austin;
Retired Associate Professor of Geography, UCA