Owner Op looking to get into intermodal

I ran intermodal with Schneider, back during the main part of covid.

The "big dogs" in intermodal are Schneider, and Swift.

Either of those should be able to get you started.

BEWARE: Your intermodal experience will be either good--or bad--depending on how the rail or shipyard you work has their act together (or doesn't).

You can waste A LOOOOOOOTTT OF TIME waiting to in-gate, out-gate...and/or waiting for a crane to put your container on a chassis.

You'll waste still more time...if the container isn't mounted on the chassis correctly (and thus, needs to be adjusted).

You'll also need good backing skills. Some yards have pretty tight parking.

As an owner-op, you well know that "time is money".

First--I recommend you talk to other drivers who are working the rail or shipyards you have in mind.

Find out if the yard(s) in question work things efficiently--or are instead a fustercluck.

Then talk to Schneider or Swift from there.

--Lual

 

I agree, example of wasted time.
Took a tanker load of fuel additives, class 3 flammable.
Ingate said my placards were wrong, i told them I had them up high, for their 20’ cars as required.
They said it was supposed to be a class 8 corrosive.

I told them they were wrong, you could wash your hands with this as long as you didn’t have fire nearby.
So i sat outside the property(CSX Memphis turns you around) for 10 hours.
I got paid after 1 hour but lost another good load due to someone billing the load wrong.

This happens a bunch.

 

I know this is an older post but. Really!? Schneider has 25,000 intermodal containers. Swift has 8,700. J B Hunt has 111,000. if you don't believe me, Google it!

 

Ok....here, I do stand corrected.

So....let's correct it--the "big dogs" in intermodal are: JB Hunt, Schneider, and Swift.

But the above numbers don't really change the main point I was trying to explain, above.

On all that....I'll stand pat.

--Lual

 

You are correct on JB Hunt. Largest domestic intermodal provider in the world.

 

It’s been hot garbage for me since January. Was going on last year. It’s a tough business and it will be hard in your truck. Try to avoid the port, I seem to do better with 53’s going to rail. Good luck

 

If you are operating under your own authority, JBH won't touch you unless you're willing to suspend it and operate under their authority, Schneider and Swift might. Can you make money, depends on what rate they are paying you, anything less than 80% isn't worth it.

 

It's an even tighter of a squeeze going on at Prime Inc Intermodal right now since we're nowhere near as big. Will wait days for actual work, mostly just shuttling empties from the rail to customers in between. I even got asked by a UPS driver at the rail how things were on our side, that was concerning lol.

 

I know this is an old post, but this is spot on! I was a O/O two different times and literally lost money at the end of the year. I hated hauling containers and I don’t know how people make money hauling them. So, you get to the rail yard wait to get checked in which will take who knows how long. Then you find what containers are ready so you take however long to find the chassis, or if you’re lucky the box is on it. If not, then you gotta go and get a box loaded on you and that can be lord knows how long. All the time and you still haven’t made any money yet. Then you finally head out empty, or loaded. Get to your stop and get live loaded, or unloaded which can be anywhere from a hour to three hours depending on how busy the shipper is. One day I got a list of containers and I looked for one for almost a hour to find out it was still in the air and wasn’t even on the ground yet. Intermodal definitely wasn’t for me, but others love being home daily and the freedom.