Diesel fuel at $6.18 a gallon has a way of getting your CFO interested in the routing guide. That’s the national average in the EIA’s October 14 fuel update, up $2.51 from a year ago.
Add AAR’s October Rail Industry Overview, which calls Q3 2026 the biggest quarter U.S. intermodal has ever had, and you can guess the email: Why isn’t more of our freight running on the rail?
The honest answer: some of it should be, and nobody’s had the time to work out which lanes make sense to convert.
Habit keeps those lanes on trucks. Guess wrong the other way, though, and you’ve traded a truck bill for a container sitting at a Chicago ramp for three days while your receiver calls every two hours.
At KBX Logistics™, rail, intermodal, truckload, freight management, and asset services operate together under one organization. That means decisions can be made based on what is best for the shipment and the network rather than what fits a particular business unit.
So we’d answer the CFO the way we’d work any lane: starting with the freight on your dock, before anybody touches the routing guide.
The Best Rail and Intermodal Lanes Are Boring
Start with your dullest freight. The lanes that belong on rail and intermodal run long, move steady volume every week, and end at a receiver with a few days of slack.
Trucks keep the hot orders, the short hauls, and the miles at either end of the rail move.
Take a resin plant outside Houston shipping to a converter near Chicago. Its bulk resin already rides covered hopper cars off a siding. The bagged resin goes by truck, but it could ride a 53-foot intermodal container with a dray at each end. Those are two different rail products, and a spreadsheet that blends them misprices both.
Houston to Chicago has the miles, but the bagged resin still has to earn the move. Eno Center research ties mode choice to transit time, cost, and what the product is worth, inside hard limits like terminal capacity and scarce rail spurs. So check weight, cutoffs, and how many days of inventory the converter really carries.
Split the Lane: Steady Freight on Rail, Hot Orders on Trucks
Most networks pick a single mode per lane and live with it. A provider running rail and trucks can split the lane instead. The weekly replenishment out of Houston rides rail, and when the converter runs short, a truck takes the hot order.
Our part is the unglamorous stuff: the right railcars for bulk and specialized freight, enough of them in the right place, and an asset services team keeping the fleet maintained and compliant. On the road, dedicated fleets give the high-volume lanes committed trucks for the weeks when the spot market gets volatile.
Fair warning, though: anybody who owns railcars has every reason to fill them, us included. So ask for proof that a provider will say no to rail.
Our proof is Koch Methanol’s gas-control equipment. The plan called for rail, but that route was a rough ride for sensitive components, so we moved all nine containers the 5,500 miles from Austria to Louisiana by road and ocean. Everything arrived on time and undamaged.
Who Owns the Handoffs When Freight Changes Modes?
Your managed freight provider should own the handoffs between modes, with a named party responsible for coordinating each transfer. If you’re still chasing the railroad, dray carrier, and broker for answers, you’re doing the job you hired that provider to handle.
When a Houston-to-Chicago container misses Tuesday’s rail cutoff, your provider should find out whether Wednesday’s train can still meet the receiver’s appointment and price a truck alternative. They bring you a recommendation with the cost and timing of both options, get any approval they need, and arrange the next move.
Keeping those connections on schedule also takes follow-up between tracking updates. KBX Track™ alerts and EDI or API connections can help flag delays, but your provider needs to know which rail milestones they report and where someone needs to make a call. Agree on those responsibilities before the first shipment, so you know who’s handling the freight even when the tracking feed is quiet.
What Moving Freight to Rail Really Costs
Rail may give your container a cheaper ride from Houston to Chicago, but it still needs a truck at each end. Add terminal fees and chassis charges to get the full transportation cost, after you check what’s already included in the quote.
The longer trip can cost you money too.
If rail adds a day or two, the receiver may need extra stock to avoid running out before your shipment arrives. You have to pay to buy and hold that stock. A few extra pallets of resin may be manageable, while the inventory needed to keep an auto parts production line supplied could eat up the freight savings.
Have your provider compare that full bill with the cost of trucking the same shipment door to door. You need to know whether rail is still cheaper after those expenses and whether it can meet your customer’s delivery date.
Pilot a Rail Lane Before You Rewrite the Routing Guide
If rail still looks cheaper, try the Houston resin lane before you change the routing guide. You need to see whether the savings and delivery dates hold up over several loads, with enough room in the schedule to handle a delay.
Agree upfront on three things:
- Total Cost: Track the final bill for every load, plus any extra inventory or trucking needed to keep the receiver supplied. Confirm when storage charges start so those fees don’t catch you by surprise.
- Delivery Performance: Check each arrival against the agreed delivery window. Look at how often shipments run late and whether the customer can absorb those delays.
- Recovery Options: Decide who can approve a backup plan and check which options remain available after the container’s on the train.
Give the lane more freight once it consistently saves money and meets delivery dates without your team having to arrange a rescue every week.
What Your CFO Really Wants to Hear
Most CFOs don’t care whether a shipment moved by truck, rail, or intermodal.
They care whether the company spent less money moving freight this year than it would have otherwise.
That’s why transportation leaders should avoid presenting rail and intermodal as transportation projects. They should present them as network optimization tools.
For example, a transportation team may identify a group of long-haul lanes where intermodal can reduce transportation costs during periods of elevated fuel prices. Six months later, changing customer requirements or tighter transit expectations may make truckload the better option on those same lanes. The value wasn’t the mode itself. The value was having the flexibility to make the change. The ability to plan, coordinate, and optimize freight across multiple modes is a core element of freight management.
When transportation modes are managed separately, those decisions often take time. Different providers, different contracts, and different operating models can slow the evaluation process. When truckload, rail, intermodal, and freight management operate together, transportation leaders can compare alternatives quickly and select the option that best fits current network conditions.
The conversation with finance becomes more powerful when the focus shifts from rates to adaptability.
Instead of saying:
“We saved $200 per load by moving freight to intermodal.”
The transportation leader can say:
“We built a network capable of shifting between truckload, rail, and intermodal based on market conditions. As fuel costs increased and truck capacity tightened, we already had alternatives available. When service requirements changed, we moved freight back to truckload where it made sense. We optimized the network instead of committing to a single mode.”
That is a strategy a CFO can support because it improves more than transportation costs.
The strongest transportation organizations don’t measure success by the percentage of freight moved on rail or intermodal. They measure success by how quickly they can adapt the network while controlling cost and maintaining service.
That’s why multimodal transportation strategies are increasingly valuable. Rail, intermodal, and truckload are not competing solutions. They’re tools that can be deployed together to balance cost, service, capacity, and risk across the network.
Optimization Happens Faster When One Team Owns the Network
The biggest advantage of a multimodal provider isn’t necessarily access to railcars or trucks.
It’s decision speed.
When transportation modes sit with different providers, evaluating alternatives often requires multiple conversations, multiple quotes, and multiple systems.
When one team manages the network, they can compare options immediately:
- What is the truckload cost?
- What is the intermodal cost?
- What transit impact should we expect?
- How tight is capacity?
- Is a rail solution available?
- Does one mode create additional risk?
That is the difference between managing individual shipments and managing a transportation network.
That’s the habit we built moving Koch’s freight, and it’s how we run 8,000+ domestic loads a day now. On a lane like Houston to Chicago, you’d get rail, intermodal, and truckload in a single managed freight program from a 3PL that grew up inside of a shipper.
Bring us a recurring lane, its shipment profile, and what the receiver needs, and we’ll tell you whether it belongs on a train. If it doesn’t, you’ll hear that too.
Rail and Intermodal Freight FAQs
Rail and intermodal fit steady, long-haul freight headed to a receiver that can absorb one or two extra days, with a siding or ramp within reach at both ends.