Intermodal Freight Achieves Historic Growth

Domestic intermodal rail container volumes have reached levels never seen before, with June posting a nearly 13% annual growth rate that puts the current cycle ahead of every year since 2020.

The data, tracked by SONAR’s Outbound Domestic Loaded Rail Container Volume index, shows the surge isn’t a short-term spike — volumes have been climbing steadily since spring and stayed near the top of the range throughout June.

This summer’s performance is unusual because domestic intermodal demand typically peaks in the fall, when retailers stock up for the holidays.

This year, summer volumes have already surpassed last year’s peak season numbers. The domestic containers tracked here are the 48-foot and 53-foot units that compete directly with long-haul truckload, not the international 20-foot and 40-foot boxes tied to import demand.

J.B. Hunt’s record quarter confirms the trend

The strength in the data lines up with what J.B. Hunt just reported.

The Lowell, Arkansas-based carrier posted second-quarter results that beat Wall Street estimates, with intermodal volumes hitting an all-time high. Loads rose 10% year over year, outpacing the 8% growth logged across the Class I railroads and the 5% increase in North American container volumes overall.

Darren Field, the company’s president of intermodal, said conversion activity from truck to rail is running at levels not seen in more than a decade. That’s an unusual statement to hear in the middle of summer. Intermodal’s formal bid season doesn’t start until October, and the typical triggers for conversion — climbing truckload rates and rising diesel prices — weren’t present when the last bid season opened.

Instead, shippers appear to be moving early.

The index data backs that up: growth has been broad-based across the calendar rather than concentrated in a short pre-bid window.

For the people moving freight day to day, this means the usual seasonal playbook is largely useless right now. Shippers who typically wait for fall bids to shift volume are already committed, and carriers who planned for a slower summer are scrambling for equipment.

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Price gap driving the shift

Part of the story is cost.

The Intermodal Contract Savings Index shows domestic intermodal is currently running about 30% cheaper than truckload on a contract basis. That’s well beyond the 10% to 15% discount the company says is typically needed to pull freight off the road.

Its own container fleet was more than 90% utilized in the quarter for the first time in several quarters.

Management flagged “massive opportunities” for further conversion in the East, where intermodal competes more directly with truckload rates. Eastern volumes were up 16% year over year in the quarter, and 31% on a two-year stack basis.

Rail service is part of the equation, though not in the way one might expect. Rail speeds have been slowing, but that hasn’t slowed shipper demand — a sign that price is doing more of the work right now than transit time.

Infrastructure limits could test the run

The risk to the sector isn’t really on the rail itself. It’s in the connective tissue around it. Drayage capacity has tightened enough that the firm flagged driver wages as a cost headwind for its intermodal unit. Transloading remains a pinch point in markets where import flows are uneven.

The rejection-rate and spot-rate data across truckload has been higher for the past several months.

Intermodal’s ability to undercut truckload contract pricing by such a wide margin gives it room to keep pulling freight, but the bigger question is whether rail networks and their surrounding drayage and transloading infrastructure can keep absorbing this pace of conversion without the service cracks that have derailed similar pushes in the past.

For now, the chart says the freight is showing up regardless.