US intermodal spot +1% to 6.2% above year; truckload holds 42.2% higher

Let us talk about the land side first, because this is where a lot of importers quietly bleed money without ever seeing it on a single invoice. InTek Logistics just published their index for the week ending 14 September, and the headline is simple enough: intermodal, which is rail plus the short truck dray at each end, moved up 1.0% week on week. On its own that is a small bump. But here is the part that should catch your eye: intermodal is now 6.2% above where it sat a year ago, and that is the highest annual reading they have printed in all of 2026. So this is not a one-week blip that will fade. The mode everyone ignored during the cheap-truck era is quietly reasserting itself, and the number proves it.

The diesel figure is the real story behind that move, and you feel it at the pump long before you feel it in any index. Diesel added another 31.8 cents to land at US$6.285 per gallon. Year on year that is a 68.1% jump. I still remember when four-dollar diesel felt expensive; now we are well past six bucks and still climbing. The reason this matters for how you choose a mode is basic physics. A train moves a ton of freight somewhere around four times as far on a gallon as a truck does. So when fuel triples, the cost gap between putting your box on rails versus putting it behind a diesel tractor does not just widen, it blows open. Rail burns a fraction of the fuel, so its rate holds up better while truck rates get hammered by the pump price.

Here is the paradox that trips people up. Truckload spot actually dropped 0.7% on the week. That sounds like relief, like the market is finally loosening. But zoom out and truckload is still up 42.2% year on year. So the week-to-week dip is noise, and the year-over-year climb is the signal. Carriers are capacity-disciplined right now and they are not ashamed to keep rates elevated because their own fuel bills are brutal. Intermodal, by contrast, is up a more modest 6.2% on the year. When you put those two lines next to each other, the arithmetic leans hard toward rail for any lane where rail is even remotely viable.

And there is capacity to actually do it. US intermodal volume is up 4% year to date. That tells me the railroads have been adding back the slack they cut during the messy 2022 to 2023 service days, and they can take more boxes now without the kind of melt-down we saw a couple of years back. Volume up 4% while rates are only up 6.2% is a healthy, absorbable market, not a squeeze. If you have been avoiding intermodal because of past service problems, this is the quarter to re-test a lane.

Let me make this concrete with a number, because vague advice does not pay the freight. I will state the assumptions so you can swap in your own. Assume you are moving 40 FEUs a month, that is forty 40-foot containers, on a Chicago to Los Angeles lane, about 2,000 miles door to door. Assume a truck burns roughly 6.5 miles per gallon under real load. Assume the rail leg is about four times more fuel efficient per box than the truck. These are the only assumptions; everything below follows from them.

For the truckload version, one tractor pulling one box at 6.5 miles per gallon over 2,000 miles is about 308 gallons one way. At $6.285 a gallon that is roughly $1,935 in fuel per box, just for the long haul. Now the intermodal version: the train moves a box about four times more efficiently, so call it roughly 77 gallons of fuel equivalent per box for the rail leg. At the same $6.285 that is about $484. The fuel saving per box is around $1,451. Before you tell me rail has dray costs too, yes it does, but the dray is short and local, a fraction of the long-haul burn. On 40 boxes a month, that fuel edge alone is north of $58,000 a month, or about $696,000 a year. That is real money that stays in the business instead of going up the exhaust pipe.

Now, I am not telling you to rip every truckload shipment onto a train tomorrow. Intermodal costs you transit time and it costs you flexibility. A truck gets from Chicago to LA in about three days; intermodal runs closer to five, and that is before the dray at each end. If your customer is a just-in-time assembly line that stalls the moment a box is twelve hours late, the $1,451 saving per box gets eaten alive by one line-down penalty. The right move is to split your book: push the stable, forecastable, non-urgent volume, the stuff that sits in a distribution center for two weeks anyway, onto rail, and keep the hot, time-critical freight on trucks. Most importers I know are running that split 80/20 the wrong way, with almost everything on truck because that is what the broker defaulted to five years ago.

Here is where the timing matters. Intermodal rates are at a 2026 high and still drifting up about 1% a week. If you wait three months to renegotiate, you will be signing at a higher base. The smart play is to lock a quarterly or annual intermodal commitment now, while the annual reading is high but the week-on-week moves are still small. Carriers will give you a better fixed number when they are not panicking about fuel, and right now they are pricing off a known diesel curve, not a spike. Get the contract before winter, because heating-season diesel demand tends to push pump prices up again and that is exactly when intermodal rates really jump.

On the truckload side, do not read the 0.7% weekly dip as a trend. It is a soft week, not a soft market. If you have spot freight you are putting out to bid every single week, you are likely overpaying versus a committed lane rate, and the 42.2% year-on-year number is the proof. Talk to your carriers about a dedicated or committed lane program. Even a light commitment, say guaranteeing them 15 loads a week on a lane, usually buys you a rate that is 8 to 12% under weekly spot, and it protects you when the market tightens again.

One more land-side item people forget: the chassis and the dray. When you shift volume to intermodal, you are adding two short truck moves, ramp or port to warehouse and back. Those dray legs have their own driver shortage and their own fuel cost, and if your warehouse sits in a chassis-starved market you can lose a full day just hunting for equipment. Build that into the comparison. The $1,451 fuel saving is real, but a $400 dray penalty on a chassis you could not find eats a quarter of it. Call your ramp operator, ask about chassis turn times, and only then commit the lane.

Let me also flag the inventory angle, because cheaper transport can lull you into bad habits. If rail saves you money but adds two days of transit, you do not fix that by stuffing more safety stock into every distribution center, that just trades a transport saving for a warehouse rent bill. The disciplined play is to hold the extra two days of inventory only at the destinations that actually see the rail volume, and keep the rest lean. I have watched teams save on freight and then blow it on warehouse rent because nobody connected the two decisions.

And keep your ear to the ground on diesel. We are at $6.285 and the year-on-year is 68%. If it keeps climbing, the intermodal edge widens further and the case for rail gets stronger every week. If it somehow falls back, say OPEC opens the taps or a recession guts demand, the gap narrows and you have got a fixed rail contract that might look rich. That is a risk worth taking, because the downside of a fixed rail rate that is slightly high is tiny compared to the upside of dodging six-dollar diesel on trucks. Structure the commitment so you can flex volume up, but you are not locked into a minimum that strangles you in a demand crash.

For exporters reading this, the same logic flips the other way. If you are moving outbound empties or finished goods to a coastal port, rail to the port is almost always cheaper than truck right now, and the empties do not care about the extra two days. Load the rail, save the fuel, and put the difference into margin or price. The 4% volume increase tells you the rails can handle it.

Peak season makes this urgent. As Q4 retail builds, intermodal lanes into the big distribution centers get tight late in the quarter. Booking intermodal space ahead matters a lot more when volume climbs. If you wait until November, you may not get the ramp slots and you get forced onto a truck at that 42% premium. So commit your rail capacity for Q4 now, do not do it reactively when the slots are gone.

If you want to pilot a lane, pick one stable one and run it thirty days in parallel: half rail, half truck, and measure the all-in cost including dray, transit, and claims. Your KPIs should be cost per box all-in, on-time door to door, and damage rate. Only scale once rail beats truck on all-in, not just on linehaul. I have seen a linehaul win hide inside dray and damage costs.

On contract structure, read the fuel clause. Intermodal contracts often carry a fuel surcharge that adjusts, and if it is tied to diesel, your fixed rate is not fully fixed. Negotiate a band or a cap on the fuel escalator so your budget has certainty. Set the minimum volume commitment at your real floor, not your hopeful number, so you do not pay penalties in a demand dip.

Keep the carrier relationship alive. Run a quarterly business review with your intermodal provider and get their trip-plan compliance numbers. If their on-time slips, your two-day buffer assumption breaks. Track it like a KPI, not a feeling. And pick your dray provider on chassis-pool access at your ramp, because a dray leg with no equipment is where intermodal quietly dies locally.

Do not put a hundred percent of a critical lane on one railroad if a single outage would strand you. Keep a truck fallback for the urgent twenty percent. Balance, not religion. And one operational note: rail emits far less per box than truck, so if a customer asks for emissions data, intermodal is an easy win to report. Not a policy point, just a sales tool.

The numbers to watch are these: intermodal up 6.2% year on year at its 2026 high, truckload up 42.2% year on year, diesel at $6.285 up 68.1% year on year, and US intermodal volume up 4% year to date. Every one of them points the same direction. The cheaper seat near term is the rail seat, the fuel is the reason, and the gap is only going to widen before winter.

When you sit down with a carrier to negotiate the intermodal commitment, the request for proposal is where most of the saving leaks out. Ask for the all-in rate broken into linehaul, fuel, and accessorials on one page, and get the fuel clause in writing. Too many importers sign a rate sheet that looks cheap and then find the dray, the chassis, and the peak-season surcharge are all separate line items, all negotiable, and all added later. See the whole number before you commit.

A second scenario shows the break-even on a shorter lane. Assume Chicago to Dallas, about 900 miles, still 40 FEUs a month. A truck at 6.5 miles per gallon burns roughly 138 gallons one way, at $6.285 that is about $868 per box. Rail is about a quarter of that fuel, roughly $217, so you save around $651 per box. Across 40 boxes that is $26,000 a month, about $312,000 a year. Shorter lanes save less per box, but the volume math still works, and the transit-risk gap is smaller, so the rail case is cleaner there.

Your 3PL is supposed to advise on mode, but most 3PLs earn more on truckload volume, so their quiet default is truck. When you ask a 3PL for a lane study, check who benefits from the answer. If the recommendation is always truck, ask to see the intermodal comparison they ran and the assumptions behind it. A good 3PL shows you both and lets you choose. A lazy one defaults you to the lane that pays them, and you pay the difference in fuel.

Fuel is the one risk you can actually structure around. Some intermodal contracts let you cap the fuel escalator for a fee. If diesel keeps climbing, that cap pays for itself fast. Others index the whole rate to diesel, in which case your fixed commitment is not really fixed. Read that clause before signing, because the $1,451 per box saving I showed assumes fuel holds where it is, and if diesel goes to seven bucks the rail edge only grows, but your budget has to know which way the contract moves.

After you commit, watch service like a hawk for the first quarter. Intermodal providers sometimes win the lane on price and then slip on trip-plan compliance once volumes rise. If your on-time drops, your two-day buffer evaporates and the whole saving reverses into expedites and angry customers. Put the on-time number in the contract with a remedy, not just a target, so you have leverage when they miss, instead of a polite monthly report that says sorry.

Do not forget reverse logistics, because that is where intermodal shines even harder. Returns and empties moving back inland are rarely urgent, so rail fits them perfectly, and the fuel saving lands where it hurts least. If you run a real returns flow, put that on rail before the forward hot freight and bank the difference. And match the commitment length to how sure you are about volume, not to what the carrier wants to sell. A quarterly deal keeps you free to renegotiate when the diesel curve bends; a year locks you through peak but costs flexibility.

One more practical point on the dray. The intermodal saving lives or dies at the ramp, and the ramp is a local market. In some cities chassis are plentiful and turn times are same-day; in others you wait. Before you commit a lane, call three dray providers at that ramp and get written turn-time quotes. The $1,451 per box saving I showed assumes a smooth dray, and a bad one can eat a third of it. The locator on the railroad site gives you the ramp, but the dray quote tells you whether the lane actually works.

One last thing I would flag: measure the win properly. Track cost per box all-in, not the linehaul rate your carrier sends you, because that number hides the dray and the fuel. Track on-time door to door, not just departure, because the customer feels arrival. And track claims, because a rough rail hand can cost you in damage what you saved in fuel. If those three move the right way for ninety days, scale the lane. If they do not, you learned cheap what the broker would never have told you.

Think about the peak-season math specifically. Q4 is when retail volume floods the rails, and that is exactly when ramp slots tighten and dray gets scarce. If you wait until October to shift volume, you are competing with everyone else for the same trains. The importers who move stable volume to rail in September get the slots; the ones who react in November get the leftovers and a truck premium on top. The 6.2% intermodal reading today is the calm before that squeeze, so act while the window is open.

And keep a truck option warm even after you commit to rail. The point is not to abandon trucks, it is to use them where they earn it. Hold a standing relationship with one truck carrier on each lane so that when a box absolutely must move today, you have a phone number, not a panic. A committed rail program plus a warm truck fallback is cheaper than being held hostage to whichever mode you happened to default to. Balance is the discipline; religion about one mode is the expensive mistake.

作者 Leo

• Audit your lane mix this week and move stable volume off truck onto intermodal where rail is viable.
• Lock a quarterly or annual intermodal commitment before winter diesel demand pushes rates higher.
• Negotiate a committed lane program with truck carriers to beat the 42.2% year-on-year spot surge.
• Confirm chassis turn times and dray capacity at your rail ramp before committing the lane.
• Hold the extra two days of transit inventory only at destinations that see rail volume.
• Commit Q4 rail capacity now instead of waiting for November ramp slots to disappear.