TL;DR: Rail is holding up. Drayage isn't. As war-driven diesel costs pushed shippers from truckload to intermodal, drayage fleets that spent four years cutting drivers are now turning away freight. With peak season approaching and driver shortages estimated to persist for up to six months, shippers in Chicago, Dallas, and northern New Jersey need to revisit their delivery assumptions now.
When diesel prices began climbing sharply after the conflict with Iran escalated, the economic case for intermodal got stronger fast. Rail delivered consistent transit times, and shippers who had stayed loyal to truckload started moving volume. The logic was sound.
What the cost models didn't capture was what happens at the ramp.
The final-mile drayage move — the truck pickup from an intermodal facility to the end customer — has become the pressure point now threatening to undo the savings shippers came looking for. Drayage fleets that spent nearly four years trimming driver rosters through the freight recession did not rebuild capacity on the way back. When volume surged in March and April, there was no flex available.
Craig Ingram, CEO of Asset-Based Intermodal in Dallas, described the change as sudden and sharp. At the start of the year he was searching for tomorrow's freight. By June, he was booked out two to three days with every driver accounted for — and turning away customers he hadn't heard from in years.
The crunch is not limited to Dallas. Gary Ahlstrom, director of pricing at STG Logistics — which operates 15,000 containers —flagged Chicago and northern New Jersey as extremely tight. His estimate: six months before driver supply catches back up with demand.
That six-month window matters. Q3 is historically intermodal's peak season. Shippers planning to wait out the current crunch are betting against a market that is about to get more congested, not less.
Service deterioration is visible in shipper feedback. One respondent to the JOC's biannual Intermodal Service Scorecard survey reported that J.B. Hunt's on-time performance had fallen from 93% to under 80% — a meaningful drop for any freight with a fixed DC receiving window.
J.B. Hunt has acknowledged the problem. SVP of Intermodal Bill Dietrich confirmed the capacity crunch at the Wells Fargo Industrials Conference on June 9, noting that the prior six to eight weeks had been especially difficult for delivery capacity.
J.B. Hunt offers a path back to reliable service through its Quantum program, which guarantees 95% or better on-time performance. The catch is that it comes at a premium. For shippers who moved to intermodal specifically to reduce transportation costs, paying for Quantum narrows or eliminates the savings advantage intermodal was supposed to deliver. The cost-benefit calculation that looked obvious in February now needs to be run again.
Hub Group presents a separate risk profile. Beyond tight capacity, Hub has been navigating significant operational and financial instability following the disclosure of an accounting error in February, which led to the removal of its CFO and COO. At least one shipper responding to the JOC survey flagged Hub's on-time delivery performance as the worst in their carrier group, with substantial missed or rescheduled appointments this year.
The rail network itself is holding near long-term norms. US Class I railroads averaged 29.4 mph for the week ending June 6 — roughly 1% below the long-term average for the same period since 2017, and essentially unchanged from 2024. That is not a distress signal.
What deserves attention is the idling car count. An average of 792 laden intermodal railcars sat idle for more than 48 hours during that same week, up from 511 the prior year. This number remains below the long-term average of 1,078, so it does not indicate a system in crisis. But it does mean containers are dwelling at ramps longer than12 months ago, and a portion of that is because dray trucks are not arriving on schedule to pick them up.
If idling volumes accelerate through Q3, effective transit times will lengthen even if rail speed holds steady. The ramp is where the clock keeps running.
The practical response is not complicated — but it requires acting before peak season, not in the middle of it.
Add buffer to intermodal delivery windows. There liable same-day or next-day dray move that may have been standard six months ago is now an assumption worth testing. For lanes touching Chicago, Dallas, or northern New Jersey, a half-day to full-day buffer is prudent until drayage capacity normalizes.
Understand your carrier exposure. If your intermodal moves rely on J.B. Hunt or Hub Group, get a clear picture of current performance on your specific lanes — not system-wide averages — before Q3 demand arrives. Network-level statistics are masking significant lane-level variation right now.
Run the cost comparison again. If J.B. Hunt's standard service now delivers below 80% on-time and the path back to95% requires Quantum pricing, the effective cost of intermodal on your most time-sensitive lanes has changed. Truckload may carry higher per-mile costs in a high-diesel environment, but a missed delivery appointment carries its own cost — and that cost does not appear on a rate sheet.
Take the Q3 timing seriously. Drayage capacity is unlikely to fully recover in six weeks. STG Logistics estimates six months. If your peak-season freight plan is built on Q2 performance assumptions, that plan needs revision before volume spikes.
The rail network can handle the volume. The question is whether your freight will clear the ramp on the schedule your operation depends on.
Source:https://www.joc.com/article/intermodal-supply-chain-exposes-recent-weak-link-drayage-6238244
