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What Shippers Really Think About Intermodal (Live from IANA EXPO) · The Intermodal Logistics Podcast

• 0:09
  SPEAKER_02: Hello and welcome to this edition of the Intermodal Logistics Podcast.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Kevin Baxter joined by my co-host for this episode in tech logistics CEO, Rick Lagore.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_02: Here we are.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_02: And we are here at Iana's Intermodal Expo 2026.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_02: And the host with the most really is here.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: Usually we I would say I'm the host when we have you on, but really you're the host.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: I am.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: I am.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for having me.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate it.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_02: So uh I mean before we get into the the subject at hand today, uh how do you feel like we're we're going so far?
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_02: We're about uh we're we're right in the middle of it now.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, going great.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: So this morning, we're just talking about this.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: This morning, our session, Rick, yes, was really good.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: We had Katie Farmer.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: I did a fireside chat with her, uh, the obviously the CEO of BNSF.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: After her was the CEO of the Union Pacific, Jim Bennett.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: And those are two frank, uh candid folk, and they stuck to form.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: They have very different styles.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what your thoughts were.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: They had very different styles in the way that they they addressed it.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but uh neither one minced words.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Neither one minced words.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: So the question, of course, is whether or not there will be a UPNS merger.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, there's huge regulatory hurdles, there's opposition from BNSF, from others.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: So uh it's very, very interesting time for the railroads, that's for sure.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_02: And uh so one of the other pieces of uh this get together was uh something that uh you were both uh involved in yesterday.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_02: And and you know, we've we've talked a couple of times over the last several months about this survey uh that you commissioned.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_02: So for those who maybe have not heard us talk about it yet, uh tell tell them about what went into the idea of the survey and and what you were trying to gain out of it.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so this is actually before I even started at IANA, this is of longstanding, and Rick, you probably are aware of this, that the board has wanted to have a PR campaign for for years.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that the rationale behind it was not everyone understands intermodal, not everyone buys into intermodal, and uh those that do may they may not stay with intermodal.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so, how can we explain what we do better and how can we shape the perceptions from the shipper about why intermodal should be part of their portfolio?
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so we hired um Jackson Spaulding, and they had a subcontractor bantam group who surveyed BCOs, both who use intermodal and who don't, as well as IANA members and stakeholders in the ecosystem.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: And they had a series of survey questions along with personal one-on-one interviews, about 45 minutes at length.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: And uh from there, we derived some really, really critical messages.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so that was part of our discussion yesterday, and it was really was Rick's idea, so we kept throwing it back to Rick.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: Let's put it on Rick.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: There was some there was there was um just a little bit of background on that.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: So there was a little bit of um, let's see, technology challenges, and so all of a sudden they were talking and talking, talking, the the uh that that were up front uh leading the discussion, and then all of a sudden, Rick, here's the microphone.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: Carry it forward.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: With all it with all due respect, Rick has been very prolific on the topic of intermodal marketing companies, where they are in the intermodal ecosystem and how there is a misperception of their utility.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: That intermodal marketing company doesn't even sort of scratch the surface of what they the services they provide for a shipper and how important they are really in growing the intermodal market share and spreading the message about it.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: So the session was really about intermodal marketing companies.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: So Rick, it really is because of you.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, we did turn to you because we did have technical challenges.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yes, we had to get Jackson Spaulding to do the briefing because we're familiar with it, and we shared it with Rick and and Shelly uh in advance, but not many of the intermodal marketing community had.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so we really wanted to get that level set of like, all right, here's what we heard, here's what they're saying about us.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: What stood out to you?
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, a lot of it wasn't a surprise because a lot of it is we're selling against um being truck going after the truck capacity.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it was great to hear it though from a different perspective because sometimes we hear what we want to hear.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and this was not necessarily that, but it was good to try kind of triangulate on this is what we've been hearing and this is what we believe needs to happen versus what these people are saying.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I and I really like the it never split it out.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure there's more detail, but it never split it out.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: These are the people that came in and they left, and why do they leave?
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: But it was really, these are the things that shippers expect.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: And then we went on as a discussion, and it really is the product has to be as truck-like as possible.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where kind of we kind of jumped off and we started to talk about you know, various things that um um we the railroads were even there.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: We had one representative of the railroad, and we we shared a few things on what we'd like to see the the railroads do to make it more of a truckload product or truck-like product.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but we also covered a lot of the the PR stuff, and PR stuff is helpful as well because there's still a lot of misperceptions.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things that came up, and it is kind of I laugh about it just because it's been happening for years, is that some people think intermodal, they ask, we don't have tracks on the side of our building.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: How are you gonna do intermodal?
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: How is that gonna happen?
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: Are you gonna have to touch my product?
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: Are you gonna transload it?
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's still going on.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, we in tech flipped to intermodal in 2007.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: We were having those conversations in 2007, and it's 2026, and we're still having those and we're still having those same conversations of how does intermodal work?
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: I don't understand it.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and besides being truck-like, we need to get it to a place that it's not all about the price.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think some of the PR that yeah IMCs have done over the years, and even some of the stuff that the railroads have done, you know, it's this much more efficient, fuel efficient, it's this much more this, it's more so we've sold it as a cheaper product.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: It isn't a cheaper product.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, in terms of value, um, price it isn't always a cheaper product, but on value, it is it provides a heck of a lot of value that I think is getting mixed and lost in the messaging that if you want something cheaper, go to Intermalt.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: Right, that's right.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um the themes that we heard were customers want reliability, they want visibility, they don't want to associate themselves with a black box and have no communication, they want consistency to the extent you can do it, and they want to have some sort of notion of a strategic partnership.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: So that's again going back to why the IMC is so so critical in the whole transaction, because you are the partner, you're the one who's making this happen.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: The customer is the shipper, it's your customer.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's why we we thought it's really good to get some smart people.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: We had a pretty good crowd yesterday to get some smart people to start talking about that.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: And some interesting things happen.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: One of the, I think, uh Rick, I want to hear your perspective on this is there's a dichotomy between people who are like, it's really complex, but we don't want to talk about how complex it is.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because if we talk about how complex it is, people will be like, I don't know, I don't want to do it.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to do it.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's one more risk I don't want to take.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, so so there was a lot of that discussion.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: But uh yeah, yeah.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: I agree.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: But I uh I I thought it was a good sounding board to start and move another to start moving this topic forward and and start getting all of us in the industry um, you know, working together um and and selling this product together and having a a unified message.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: And IANA is the perfect third party that's sitting out there, and we just haven't leaned on what they can do and how they can bring us in.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's been more, you know, helping on regulatory issues, uh sitting um going to Congress, going to Capitol Hill and talking some of those issues, which are great because we need that stuff too, but there's so much more that IANA can bring to the table for intermodal than just regulatory support.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_02: Well, so you mentioned you are you already have your ideas as to what people are going to be saying about like what the what the flaws are or what's holding them back.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_02: Was there anything that surprised you out of the out of the findings or surprised the room uh and uh either way, like uh in terms of of what you're hearing?
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think that there was anything that surprised well, there wasn't anything that I saw that was surprising.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: I guess what was interesting to me was that the range in shipper opinions, because there's that those shippets are like there were some you saw the comments are like this is the best thing.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know why anyone wouldn't use intermodal.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: And then somebody else was like, oh god, no, I would never use intermodal.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so why is that?
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it goes back to whatever their experience was, it wasn't reliable or consistent, or maybe there wasn't visibility, or right, the themes that we keep striking.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's why it's like every single time it can't just be a one-off, right?
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: And and you know, we haven't talked about this yet, but we're seeing intermodal coming back to us for a lot of different reasons.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so how do we make sure that we sustain that?
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: And and part of it is going back to what they want, right?
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: Give our customers what they want.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, crazy, right?
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I mean, that's that's the the timing of this is just very interesting, I think, because um it happened to be this year that you do the survey and then it happens to be this year that this big truckload conversion environment is happening, and truckload is the thing that people want their service to be like.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_02: So it's all kind of intertwined, and uh, and so you're you're hearing right now that this is what they want, and you're use trying to use this information to give the people what they want and keep them and not to hurt them.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so when we were, you know, I I told you I interviewed Katie Farmer this morning, and that was, you know, she without she had no idea about these themes, she hadn't even seen the survey, but she said the exact same thing that the customer wants to know that you're investing in them, and they want to know that you're investing in yourself.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: So whether it's adapting with new technology or it investing in the infrastructure to make sure that you have the resources for the future moves or whatever it looks like.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so that's going again back to the partnership.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so one of the suggestions that came out of the meeting was Rick, you hinted at it, was can we get everybody together and have a session with, you know, is it the IMCs and the railroads, the IMCs, the railroads, and the Drake carriers, so everyone can be on the same page of what the expectation is and how we can actually get there.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: And and one of the other things is all right, let's let's develop who's gonna be working on this because you can't, if it's like everybody, then it's nobody.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to have people who are really, you know, charged with doing something on this.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: So let's get a working group on it.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's what we came to at the end.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: And then hopefully some of us volunteered.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: I know I volunteered to be on the committee to to to go search.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that was that was that was more like it.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna chair this too, right?
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, but um that that might be told later.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh exactly.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: But uh no, I I I I I think bringing it into a smaller group and and bringing in the different things, because then also if you have a little bit smaller group, then we don't have like a hundred voices trying to say the same thing and fight back and forth a little bit.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I putting in a steering committee, because we Iana has a steering committee for just a number of other things.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: And and being able to take it another uh the next step would be great.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: Because there's some good things in there.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: There's some good things in there.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_02: So one of the other pieces, and I mean it goes in going back to the PR side of things, uh if you're hearing shippers say this is the best thing, how do you get other people to hear that this is the best thing?
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_02: And uh and maybe convert somebody that way.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: So that was one of the things we talked about, which is what are the messages that resonate?
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: What is it that you have been successful in in sort of converting your customer into a longtime customer?
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I I do think it's it's really probably case by case and adapting to the customer.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: But overall, if you're having a dialogue and a communication where you're listening and you're saying, all right, I understand it.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: And and and here's the other thing that was interesting is the recognition that intermodal might not be the right fit for everybody.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so having that recognition, and that to me provides trust because then you're saying, listen, I don't know if this is the right thing for you here, but it could be somewhere else, right?
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: Having that kind of honesty builds trust, and that's another thing that we hear the shocker that that customers want.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: They want to trust who they're doing business with.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: They want to be able to sleep at night when it's when the doors close on their warehouse and product is picked up and it's moving and they don't have to worry about it.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: Kind of out of sight, out of mind at that point.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, they don't want to have to manage their providers.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: We they have a lovely expression we heard was fear of messing up, FOMU.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: Meaning if they pick intermodal, are they gonna FOMO?
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: And they're being like, uh oh, what did I just do?
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, these are hundreds of millions of dollars of commerce coming through, and they're like, I don't want to make a mistake.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: So uh I think it's really incumbent on us to have that level of honesty.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I suggested too uh that we present these findings to the railroads, the Association of American Railroads.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we have Sean Terman who's on our uh from Norfolk Southern, who's on our PR committee, but I think it would they would all benefit from hearing these outcomes.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_02: You want them to have FOMO, not FOMU.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you want the people who are not using intermodal to have the FOMO.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's right.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_02: So um was there one uh I mean you talked about coming and coming out with the the working group after this to continue the discussion more focused, but it if somebody maybe wasn't in that that room or hasn't seen the survey yet, is there is there one kind of key takeaway that if you're an IMC or if you're a Drape uh any anybody in the the intermodal chain, is there something that maybe they do right now that's a little different than or or something they think about a little more than than maybe they were thinking about before?
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I would love to hear Rick's answer to this.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: I do think it's probably working with all your channel partners to be as collaborative as you can be on on the move itself and and so that the customer has visibility into we're all talking together, we're all part of it.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: We're I'm the quarterback, but it's a team, and so you want to know how we're working together, we are all working together.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: I what do you think?
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: And that's well, I'm I'm gonna plug the expo here.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what's great about the expo because all of the people that we're collaborating with every day, we get to see, as I've been saying, the 3D version of them versus a Teams call or whatever the case may be, or a phone call.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: And it it's just we make meaningful um um relationships are right here on the floor um over basically two and a half days.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that's one of the great things about what this this whole thing is all about.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um in terms of you know, getting people and what can we do differently right now and how to hold them is um the market has been down for so long that I would imagine some salespeople at some IMCs are really hot after some of this this business.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I think what we need to do is we need to make sure that we compensate people properly for for what's out there and make sure that they're not trying to chase people that shouldn't be intermodal.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we spend a lot of time, we spend a lot of time talking about what's a good fit.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: We don't spend enough time about what's not a good fit.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: And some of the salespeople probably are like, I haven't made a commission for like three years now, and now I have an opportunity, and they're gonna want to try to put a round peg in a square hole, and that's where it fails.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's where you lose the trust because intermodal is is not a closed loop environment when you just order a truck from a broker in a non-asset situation.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's a closed loop system.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: In intermodal, you you're bringing in other partners that granted your IMC makes it closed loop, but you have to have that that handoff from the Dre carrier to the rail to back to the Dre and all that communication in there.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so a lot of people that come to Intermodal a lot of times are coming on the spot market because I didn't, it costs me too much.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: And then they come in the spot market and then they had a bad experience because it didn't work like like truck.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: Intermodal doesn't work like truck.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: You need to get the drain rolling, get familiar with the facility.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: Typically, you're gonna go ahead and you're gonna drop containers because that's when it works out best.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: You got dra and then you get your Draymond working, and then the rails working, and then that then you've got your Draymond working on the delivery side, and it's a closed loop system, and it takes a little bit of rolling to get get everything going.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: If you have someone that comes in and the salesperson says, I got this, I got this, I got this, and then all of a sudden, okay, well, it completely fell apart, then we lost the trust, they don't come back again.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's one of the hardest things, and one of the things that we but things to do, but one of the things that we need to really pay attention to right now, again, it's been such a down market for so long.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's tough to say no, but you know, sometimes no is the right answer.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: The right fit, the right freight.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, absolutely.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: So, what were you saying earlier?
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: Come to us once and then Oh yeah.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: So if they have a negative experience on a truck, a shipper will say, I'll just find another trucking company.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: If they have a negative experience on intermodal, they say, I'm never using intermodal again.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so we have got to combat that.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: And and uh again, I'll quote Katie Farmer.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: We talked about the intermodal moment.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: Let's make an intermodal era, and and I think we're capable of doing it.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: We're having these thoughtful discussions.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: This is not the end of the discussion, this is a beginning.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_02: Uh there's plenty more meat on the bone to discuss, and I'm sure we'll we'll touch on this again uh as we go forward.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_02: But uh, Ann, thanks thanks for joining us in person.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_02: First in-person appearance.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: I know, this is so exciting.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_02: And thank you for joining us on this edition of the Intermodal Logistics Podcast.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_02: You can find us wherever you get your podcasts.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_02: Please do subscribe or follow us, drop us a comment, and uh you can email us to podcast at intechlogistics.com.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_02: Or more about in tech logistics, you can find at www.intechlogistics.com.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_02: For Ian Rinkey and Rick Lagore, I'm Kevin Baxter.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks again for joining us, and we'll be back soon with another episode.