From the Editor — For domestic intermodal, a moment in the southern California sun

As the third quarter neared its end, North American intermodal still had “the wind at its back,” up 6.6% year over year for the quarter’s second-to-last week, intermodal expert Larry Gross wrote in a Sept. 30 LinkedIn post. “Looks like domestic intermodal is doing all the heavy lifting,” he noted.

After attending the Intermodal Association of North America’s (IANA) annual expo in mid-September and listening to the event’s speakers, Managing Editor Jeff Stagl wrote in the first sentence of this month’s cover story, ‘The North American intermodal sector is ‘having a moment.’”

And, yeah, domestic intermodal’s largely responsible for this momentousness.

It’s certainly key to Union Pacific Railroad’s best-laid intermodal plans — particularly in southern California, where the Class I operates five intermodal terminals and has been preparing for the volume growth they knew was (and will be) coming. As UP Executive Vice President of Marketing and Sales Kenny Rocker told Stagl: Rail has but 27% of the total transportation market in the L.A. basin and “the natural order of demand in southern California tells us we should expect to continue growing.”

Demand tells BNSF Railway strategists the same thing. Witness the railroad’s BIG intermodal plan for the region: the Barstow International Gateway (BIG) facility in southern California.

Intermodal is in BNSF’s DNA and the BIG facility serves as the next phase of the Class I’s intermodal franchise, BNSF President and CEO Katie Farmer told IANA expo attendees (see Stagl’s reporting on IANA’s 2026 event on RailPrime, our subscription offering dedicated to all things freight transportation).

BNSF officials think BIG, which will feature a rail yard, intermodal facility and multiple warehouses for transloading freight from international containers to domestic containers, can open by 2029, Farmer said.

In the meantime, high diesel prices and other rising costs are among the factors prompting shippers to shift freight to intermodal in SoCal and beyond. For railroads, volume growth could be there for the taking at least through 2027 with the usual-suspect caveat — as long as railroads deliver on the service reliability promise, ACT Research VP and Senior Analyst Tim Denoyer said during an IANA panel session.

We’ll see what rail execs tell us, and how railroads perform, as the year wends its way toward 2027.

See you at RailTrends

Intermodal will be a topic of discussion (or at least an undercurrent or meaningful thread) at this year’s iteration of RailTrends®, to be held Nov. 19-20 at the New York Marriott Downtown. My colleague and friend Tony Hatch, co-founder of RailTrends, dubbed this year’s event “The Rock & Roll Circus” — read the event preview Ringmaster Tony, a rock & roller in his own right, penned to learn why he’s invoking the 1968 concert film hosted by The Rolling Stones.

Scanning this year’s speaker lineup offers clues. It includes leaders from all seven Class Is (including five CEOs), all four Surface Transportation Board members, the 2026 Railroad Innovator Award recipient (Genesee & Wyoming Inc. CEO Michael Miller) and other industry stars (established and rising). But there’s more, as Tony notes. Including the you-have-to-be-there vibe RailTrends gives off and has done for a while now.

For the full agenda and to register, visit railtrends.com. See you there.