Intermodal Transportation

Intermodal Key to the concept of intermodal transportation is that this is related to logistics. Firms must be able to move goods around the world. They need to get supplies to production facilities, finished goods to warehouses and then to retail outlets or the end customer. This need for transportation has resulted in the development of a number of different transportation solutions. It is necessary to understand that transportation solutions emerge to solve problems and to take advantage of opportunities.

When the railway was built, it was primarily to serve as a means of getting goods across long distances, compared with the alternatives. The same can be said about other forms of transportation that are typically used in cargo shipping. A mode of transportation is any means of getting a good from one place to another. Over the decades, several modes of transportation have emerged, because each one has specific advantages. Trucks are useful for reaching locations that otherwise are poorly connected.

They are more expensive than other modes because they are relatively inefficient, but trucks reach specific destinations and there is a high degree of control over time. Air freight is expensive, and only gets goods between airports, but it is the fastest solution. Water-borne shipping tends to be a low cost solution, but can only get goods as far as the water will let them. Thus, it is often useless for inland areas, except maybe in Europe.

Rail transport tends to be highly efficient, but is limited to where the fixed infrastructure (rail lines) exist, and these are less common than roadways. Because each mode of transportation has its own strengths and weaknesses, companies often find it beneficial to use multiple modes of transportation in order to move goods from one place to another. By combining different modes of transport, companies can leverage the advantages of each in order to develop logistics solutions that meet their needs.

This is the definition of intermodal -- the use of multiple different modes of transportation in order to move goods from one place to another. There are other important facets of intermodal transportation that make it special. The first is that it almost always uses shipping containers. These containers are highly-efficient because they allow for goods to be shipping via multiple modes of transportation without the need for emptying and repacking the goods at any point along the way.

The goods can literally be packed into a container at the factory and then unpacked at a warehouse prior to shipping to the final customer. Through the different stages of transportation, no matter how many such stages there are, the goods remain in the container. This is different from a situation where goods need to be packed and repacked, because it emphasizes the streamlined nature of intermodal transportation. Goods flow more easily through the different modes, giving specific advantages to intermodal transportation.

Typically, intermodal transportation involves rail to a port, ship across an ocean, rail from the port to a centralized location, and then truck to the final destination. All of this can occur quickly, because it is simply.