Chapter 06 · The Tour
Who makes it move
No single company moves a container coast to coast — a relay of specialists hands the sealed box off, one to the next.
Intermodal works because the work is divided. No one firm owns the ship, the track, the truck, and the cargo all at once. Instead, a chain of specialists each handles one leg and passes the sealed box to the next, governed by contracts and standardized handoffs.
The rail backbone alone spans nearly 140,000 miles, run by six Class I railroads and roughly 615 short line railroads[1]. The Class I roads carry the bulk of the network — about 67% of mileage, 87% of employees, and 94% of revenue[2] — while short lines act as the capillaries reaching local shippers the big roads do not serve directly.
The players, role by role
Companies below are named for identification only, to make the roles concrete — no endorsement is implied.
Ocean carriers & alliances
Carriers own and operate the vessels and set the deep-sea schedules. To pool ship capacity on trade lanes they form alliances — vessel-sharing agreements that share space, not ownership or pricing. As of February 2025 the major groupings are the Gemini Cooperation (Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd), the Ocean Alliance, and the Premier Alliance, with MSC operating largely on its own.
Ports & marine terminals
A port authority is the landlord that governs the land; the marine terminal is the operating facility where ships berth and containers are lifted on and off. The two roles are distinct. In 2024 Los Angeles handled about 10.3 million TEUs, Long Beach about 9.6 million, and New York and New Jersey about 8.7 million — the largest East Coast gateway.
Class I & short line railroads
Six Class I railroads — BNSF, Union Pacific, CSX, Norfolk Southern, CN, and CPKC — run the long-distance rail line-haul. All six handle intermodal, a core franchise for the Western U.S. and transcontinental Canadian roads. Short lines gather and deliver traffic to and from this network at the local end.
IMCs (intermodal marketing companies)
An IMC buys rail intermodal capacity wholesale directly from the railroads, arranges drayage and equipment, and resells door-to-door service to shippers under a single freight bill. IMCs exist because railroads chose to sell intermodal wholesale rather than retail; a broker that does not buy rail service directly is not an IMC.
Drayage carriers
Drayage carriers provide the short-haul first and last-mile trucking between ports or rail ramps and shippers. Every interstate motor carrier must register with the FMCSA and hold a USDOT number, and shippers or IMCs vet them through FMCSA's SAFER system for operating authority, insurance, and out-of-service status.
Chassis pools & providers
A container needs a wheeled frame to ride the road. Ocean carriers once owned the U.S. chassis fleet and supplied it free, but beginning around 2009 they divested toward third-party lessors and neutral chassis pools such as DCLI, TRAC Intermodal, and Flexi-Van. Pooling keeps chassis available where containers actually need them.
BCOs (beneficial cargo owners)
A beneficial cargo owner is the importer or owner of the goods who controls its own logistics and contracts directly with carriers rather than going through a freight forwarder or NVOCC. BCOs are the end customers the rest of the chain ultimately serves, and the railroads' wholesale-only model is why a BCO typically reaches intermodal rail through an IMC.
How they hand off
Follow one import box. An ocean carrier, sailing under an alliance schedule, delivers it to a marine terminal, which lifts it ashore. From there a Class I railroad hauls it across the country, with a drayage trucker — pulling a chassis from a chassis pool — covering the short moves at each ramp. Throughout, an IMC may orchestrate the rail, dray, and equipment so the BCO sees one bill. The IMC typically coordinates rather than owns the assets.
A reasonable question: why exactly six railroads? The Surface Transportation Board defines a Class I road by an annual operating-revenue threshold indexed for inflation — about $1.075 billion for the 2024 determination[3]. Above that line sit BNSF, Union Pacific, CSX, Norfolk Southern, CN, and CPKC, all of which handle intermodal[4]. Six operate today — a proposed Union Pacific–Norfolk Southern merger is under STB review but not approved, so the count still stands at six (more on that in the final chapter)[5].
CPKC's reach hints at where the chain is going. By linking Canada, the United States, and Mexico, it became the first railroad to offer single-line service across all three countries — one carrier end to end, with no interchange to slow the box down.