The Quiet Comeback: Why Intermodal Deserves a Second Look Right Now

For the past couple of years, shippers have had the upper hand. Capacity was easy to find, rates stayed low, and truckload carriers competed hard for every load. That window is closing.

Tender rejection rates have climbed to their highest levels since early 2022. Spot rates have moved above contract rates for the first time in several years. Smaller carriers continue to exit the market, and manufacturing activity is picking back up after more than two years of contraction. Put simply: the easy market shippers got used to is starting to tighten.

At the same time, something quieter has been happening. Intermodal volumes have been climbing steadily, year over year, even as the broader freight market stabilizes. Rail is expected to settle into a more normalized environment after a rockier stretch. For shippers who have spent the last few years thinking almost exclusively in truckload terms, that’s worth a second look.

Two levers to pull

This isn’t a story about rail beating trucking, or intermodal making truckload obsolete. It’s a story about having more than one lever to pull.

Truckload still wins when speed matters, when freight is time-sensitive, when the haul is shorter, or when a shipment needs specialized handling and a dedicated driver relationship. Nothing about the current market changes that.

Intermodal earns its place on longer hauls where extended transit time is a fair trade for meaningfully lower cost and steadier capacity. It also tends to hold up better when truckload capacity gets tight, and prices climb, since a rail network doesn’t feel a driver shortage the same way the highway does.

The shippers who come out ahead over the next year won’t be the ones who pick a side. They’ll be the ones who know when to use each tool and have a partner who can move freight between them without missing a beat.

Why this matters now, specifically

Three things are converging at once. Truckload capacity is tightening and getting more expensive. Rail is becoming more predictable after a period of disruption. And shippers, many of whom haven’t operated in a tight truckload market in years, are being asked to rethink procurement strategies they’ve been able to run on autopilot for a while.

That’s a planning problem, not just a pricing problem. Locking a network into a single mode right as conditions shift is how shippers end up exposed when the next disruption hits, whether that’s a capacity crunch, a weather event, or something else entirely.

Building a network that flexes

The practical takeaway is straightforward: build slack into the network before you need it. That means knowing which lanes in your freight profile could shift to intermodal without hurting service, understanding where the cost savings are real versus marginal, and working with a carrier who can actually execute across both modes rather than just quoting one and pointing at the other.

This is exactly where a carrier that runs both road and rail earns its keep. It’s not about pushing a shipper toward whichever mode is more convenient for the carrier that week. It’s about building a routing guide that uses truckload where truckload makes sense and intermodal where intermodal makes sense, and adjusting as conditions change.

The resilience thread

This connects to a pattern worth watching across the supply chain more broadly. Whether it’s wildfire disruption pulling freight off its usual corridors or a border crossing becoming a chokepoint, the networks that hold up best are rarely the ones that leaned hardest into a single mode or a single route. They’re the ones built with options.

Intermodal isn’t a replacement for truckload. It’s an option a lot of shippers haven’t fully exercised. In a market that’s tightening again, it might be time to.

Bison Transport moves freight by road and rail across North America. If your network is due for a mode mix review, our team can help you find where intermodal fits and where it doesn’t.