A growing share of American shippers are moving long-haul freight from trucks to trains, according to a Marketplace analysis of logistics decisions at manufacturers, retailers, and consumer-goods companies.

The piece, published by Marketplace — the public radio program distributed through American Public Media — examines how procurement teams are weighting intermodal options more heavily as they redesign transportation networks around diesel price volatility, driver shortages, and emissions disclosure requirements.

What is driving the truck-to-rail shift?

Logistics teams interviewed across industries cite three intersecting pressures behind the modal reallocation:

• Diesel price volatility that has repriced long-haul trucking on short notice, exposing shippers to spot-rate spikes
• Persistent shortages of over-the-road drivers that limit truck capacity even when freight demand rises
• Tightening scope-1 and scope-3 emissions reporting requirements that tilt sourcing decisions toward lower-carbon modes

Rail produces substantially lower greenhouse-gas intensity per ton-mile than long-haul trucking on most corridors. Sustainability committees at large shippers have begun using that gap to justify modal shifts to procurement officers, even where total delivered cost is comparable.

What does the modal economics look like?

Rail's per-mile cost advantage widens on lanes longer than roughly 750 miles. Above that threshold, driver hours-of-service limits, fuel surcharges, and overnight detention costs erode the truck's pricing lead. Class I railroads now publish structured intermodal tariffs that target specific lane pairs where long-haul trucking has historically dominated.

The Association of American Railroads publishes weekly service metrics on terminal dwell, train velocity, and on-time performance. Shippers monitor these indicators alongside their own lane-level reliability data when deciding how much volume to commit to intermodal contracts.

Most intermodal moves today move inside 53-foot domestic containers owned or leased by steamship lines and pool operators. Trailers-on-flatcar still run on lower-volume lanes where shippers own their trailer fleet and want door-to-door loading.

Where the change is most visible

Class I railroads operate nearly all U.S. intermodal terminal capacity. The lane groups showing the largest gains in intermodal volume connect:

• West Coast container ports at Los Angeles and Long Beach to Midwest inland interchanges through Chicago
• Pacific Northwest gateways to upper Midwest and Canadian destinations
• Southeast manufacturing hubs to Southwest consumer markets through Atlanta, Memphis, and New Orleans
• Gulf Coast export flows to Northeast and Midwest distribution centers
• Automotive parts and components on dedicated lanes between OEM plants and tier-1 suppliers

Container volumes at Los Angeles and Long Beach continue to feed double-stack trains operated by BNSF Railway and Union Pacific into the Chicago gateway. CSX and Norfolk Southern serve most of the eastern intermodal volumes, with Canadian National and Canadian Pacific handling cross-border flows.

What still keeps trucks in the lane

Several structural factors continue to favor trucks for shorter hauls and time-sensitive freight:

• Last-mile delivery economics and dock scheduling precision
• Damage and claims experience on certain intermodal services
• Capital sunk into private trucking fleets already absorbed into shipper balance sheets
• Customer service-level agreements measured in hours rather than days

Retailers and manufacturers operating on next-day delivery commitments rarely accept multi-day rail transit regardless of unit-cost savings. Detention charges at origin and destination ramps can offset the headline rate advantage when trucks wait for loading windows.

How shippers structure the new mix

Logistics directors in the broader industry trend treat intermodal as a hedge against truck spot-rate spikes rather than as the primary mode for long-haul freight. A typical allocation places high-volume, lane-stable freight on rail and reserves trucks for shorter distances, customer-specific windows, and freight where modal switching would trigger service failures.

Third-party logistics providers have built dedicated intermodal desks that bundle rail capacity, drayage, and terminal handling into single contracts for shippers that want a single point of accountability. That bundling has lowered the operational complexity that historically deterred procurement teams from shifting volume away from full truckload.

The Marketplace piece at marketplace.org details the corporate examples behind the documented shift. Quarterly intermodal reports from the Class I carriers in the coming quarters will indicate whether the modal reallocation is structural or a cyclical response to the recent run-up in truck spot rates.