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BNSF Rail and JB Hunt have made an ambitious push to attract US shippers with just-in-time strategies to a new intermodal service.
The outlook for the intermodal sector remains gloomy, but, nonetheless, management at BNSF and JB Hunt see a chance to boost volumes with a play for just-in-time traffic, launching a service pledging high on-time performance and transit savings of a day.
Aiming to lure time-sensitive shipments from trucking providers, their Quantum offering, managed by 10-strong team of employees from each firm, promises on-time performance of 95%.
The faster transit times will be achieved by giving priority to Quantum shipments for dray and rail movement, and by aligning the operators’ forecasts for dray, container and rail capacity.
“Quantum allows customers with service-sensitive freight to benefit from the cost savings of intermodal, while reducing their carbon footprint and maintaining the level of service and consistency needed in their supply chains,” claimed Darren Field, JB Hunt’s president of intermodal.
According to JB Hunt, using rail reduces a shipment’s carbon footprint by as much as 60% and the partners estimate that 7m-11m loads of freight are ripe for conversion to intermodal.
The collaboration comes two months after JB Hunt acquired the brokerage of BNSF Logistics and was followed yesterday by the announcement of a Mexico-US cross border intermodal service, in cooperation with Mexican rail provider GMXT.
JB Hunt said the new Eagle Pass Gateway service, to be launched on 1 January, would reach Chicago a day faster than existing rail services from Monterrey.
However, BNSF and JB Hunt may face an uphill struggle with their new intermodal offering. Pricing for the Quantum service varies – ranging from traditional intermodal to over-the-road rates – and may not be enough to lure shippers from a trucking sector still in the doldrums and anxious not to lose business.
Market projections from Uber Freight in its 2023 Q4 Market Update and Outlook show the intermodal sector stuck in a long-lasting drought. The report predicts intermodal volumes will remain depressed and adds: “There will not be an intermodal peak season this year.”
Uber’s analysts noted that intermodal volumes have been down year on year in 25 of the past 26 months, and do not envisage volume growth until the second quarter of next year. At the same time, trucking capacity remains plentiful, although it has been shrinking as truckers quit the market.
“Intermodal remains challenged relative to the truckload competition,” the report concludes.
Meanwhile, BNSF upped its operating technology this month with a new terminal operating and traffic control system, from tech provider Tideworks, at its hub in Memphis, giving the rail company “centralised visibility of its terminal operations to optimise planning and improve terminal productivity”.
Last year it installed the Tideworks system at its Chicago hub.
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