Anne Reinke

is talking about the next era of intermodal.

For a lot of folks who may not be aware, Anne Reinke, who was previously head of leadership over at TIA, Transportation Intermediaries Association, she came over to IANA, and we talked to her on the podcast a little over a year ago.

and preparation for her first IANA Expo.

And she was, I think, a few months on the job.

There was no more seating when I arrived, and most of the people who came in after me stood along the walls of the conference center ballroom.

Farmer joined IANA president and CEO Anne Reinke for a moderated conversation, whereas Venna followed without a moderator, choosing to speak directly to the audience and take questions from the room.

I think both leaders were focused on the same prize, moving more freight from truck to rail.

they gave the audience two fundamentally different answers to that question.

That of course is Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern.

And when this topic began to be hotly contested at the Expo, Anne Reinke sat down with Katie Farmer, CEO of BNSF, Katie gave the understanding of why her company and so many people are opposing this massive transcontinental railroad, the first transcontinental railroad that could ever exist in the United States.

And then after Katie and her conversation with Anne was concluded, Jim Venna came out, CEO of Union Pacific, and he gave his own story of where he sees the value of the merger.

And we are, without a doubt, in an intermodal moment with diesel prices the way that they are right now, more and more freight is moving to the rails.

Beyond the joking aside of what Jim Bennett said about Santa Claus, which again, I vehemently disagree with, generally speaking, the story is about diesel.

I mean, we've seen the diesel prices continue to tick up every single day almost, and that is causing more and more shippers to look at freight to go through the railroads right now.

The problem here is that this moment for Intermodal Can it become what Anne Reinke calls an era of intermodal? All the ingredients are there, but there's still a lot of uncertainty ahead.

And can the railroads handle this increased capacity? I don't know.