Intermodal volume is growing at double-digit rates this fall: US railroads moved 302,252 intermodal units in the week ending October 10, 2026, up 10.4% year over year, and North American intermodal was up 10.8% for the week ending October 17 (AAR; AJOT). More containers and trailers on rail means more handoffs between dray carriers, ramps and railroads. Each handoff is a point where the shipment changes hands, changes systems, and often changes who is responsible for telling the customer what is happening.

For brokers and 3PLs selling intermodal, the growth is good news. The challenge is that most visibility problems in intermodal are not on the train. They happen at the edges.

Why is intermodal volume climbing this fall?

Intermodal tends to gain share when truckload capacity tightens and shippers look for cheaper long-haul options on lanes where transit time allows it. This fall, port volumes have been heavy on the West Coast, which feeds import boxes onto rail. We covered the volume pressure at the ports, and what it does to terminal appointments, in our look at the Port of LA's record September.

The result is that ops teams that handled intermodal as a side product are now moving meaningful volume through it, often with the same headcount and the same manual tracking habits.

Where does intermodal visibility break?

A single intermodal move has at least three legs and two transfers. Each leg is often run by a different party, with its own status updates in its own format.

• Origin dray to ramp — Who generates the event: Dray carrier, then origin ramp · What usually goes dark: Whether the box actually made the cutoff for the planned train
• Rail linehaul — Who generates the event: Railroad · What usually goes dark: Train delays, reassignment to a later train, misrouted units
• Arrival at destination ramp — Who generates the event: Railroad and ramp · What usually goes dark: Grounding time, which starts the free-time clock
• Ramp to delivery dray — Who generates the event: Dray carrier · What usually goes dark: Whether a driver is assigned before last free day

The pattern is consistent. Events exist, but they live in different places: a railroad portal, a dray carrier's email, a ramp notification, a driver's text. Nobody stitches them into one timeline for the load, so the customer asks "where is my container?" and a rep checks three sources to answer.

This is the same coordination problem we described in our guide to multi-modal email orchestration across sea, air, road and rail: the information is there, it just arrives in pieces.

What does a missed handoff cost?

The expensive failures in intermodal are mostly timing failures at the destination end:

• Missed last free day. Once a box is grounded at the ramp, free time starts. If nobody notices the arrival and dray is not scheduled, storage and per diem charges begin. Those charges then turn into invoice disputes, which we broke down in our post on demurrage and detention invoice disputes during port congestion.
• Missed train cutoff at origin. If the origin dray arrives after the cutoff, the box rolls to the next train. The customer's delivery date moves, and often nobody tells them until the original date passes.
• Stale ETAs. A rail delay of a day or two is common. The problem is not the delay itself; it is the customer learning about it from their own receiving dock.

None of these require a new data source to fix. They require someone, or something, watching every load at every handoff and acting when an event arrives or fails to arrive.

How do agents stitch the rail handoff together?

An agent tracks an intermodal load by collecting every event from every party into a single timeline, comparing it to the plan, and acting at each handoff: confirming the origin ramp cutoff, watching rail progress, notifying the customer on arrival, booking the delivery dray and alerting the team before last free day.

1. Build one timeline per load. The agent reads rail event notifications, ramp emails, dray carrier updates and driver messages, matches each to the load by container or trailer number, and writes the event into your TMS. One record, every leg.

2. Check the origin cutoff. When the origin dray is dispatched, the agent compares the pickup time and expected ramp arrival against the train cutoff. If the box is at risk of rolling, the rep hears about it before it happens, not after.

3. Watch for silence, not just events. If a box should have departed and no departure event has arrived, the agent flags it. Missing events are often the first sign of a problem.

4. Notify on arrival. When the box is grounded at the destination ramp, the agent sends the customer an arrival update with the expected delivery window, and starts the free-time countdown.

5. Trigger the delivery dray. On arrival, the agent sends the pickup request to the assigned dray carrier, confirms a driver and appointment, and follows up if there is no confirmation within your set window.

6. Alert before last free day. If the box is still on the ground a day before free time ends, the agent escalates to the rep with the container number, ramp, and dray status. That is a call worth making, unlike the dozens of routine status checks it replaced.

For more examples of what event-driven tracking looks like in practice, see our real-world examples of AI shipment visibility.

What should brokers and 3PLs set up first?

Start with the destination end, because that is where the charges are.

1. List every open intermodal load with its current leg and the source of its last status update.
2. Flag every box grounded at a ramp without a confirmed delivery dray appointment. These are your exposure to storage and per diem.
3. Define your escalation rules: how many hours after grounding without a dray confirmation before a rep gets involved, and how many days before last free day.
4. Standardize the customer update: arrival notice, delivery appointment, and any ETA change, sent the same way for every load.
5. Measure: count last-free-day misses and storage charges per month now, so you can see the effect once tracking is automated.

Frequently asked questions

Why is intermodal tracking harder than truckload tracking?

A truckload has one carrier from pickup to delivery. An intermodal move has at least three parties (origin dray, railroad, destination dray) and two transfers, each with its own systems and status formats.

What is last free day in intermodal?

It is the final day a container or trailer can stay at the destination ramp without storage charges. After that, storage and often per diem charges accrue until the box is picked up and returned.

Can AI agents read rail event notifications?

Yes. An agent can read rail and ramp notifications from email or portal exports, match them to loads by equipment number, and update the TMS without a rep re-keying anything.

Does this require new tracking hardware?

No. Most of the events already exist in emails, portals and carrier messages. The gap is collecting them into one timeline and acting on them.

The bottom line

Intermodal is up double digits, and the volume is exposing how much of intermodal tracking still depends on reps checking multiple sources by hand. Stitch every rail, ramp and dray event into one timeline per load, notify customers on arrival, trigger delivery dray automatically and alert before last free day, so the growth shows up as margin rather than storage charges.

Debales deploys AI agents for intermodal event tracking, drayage scheduling, arrival notices and last-free-day alerts. Book a demo.