How to Predict the 2026 Intermodal Rebound with IANA’s Andrew Sibold

Joe Lynch: [00:00:00] Hello, friends. Welcome to Logistics of Logistics. My name is Joe Lynch. Thank you so much for joining us today. Today’s topic is how to predict the 2026 intermodal rebound with Diana’s Andrew Seibold. How’s it going, Andrew?

Andrew Sibold: Oh, it’s going well. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it

Joe Lynch: Yes. We talked the other day and we were just talking before we hit the record button. I’m excited to talk to you about this topic. So Andrew, please introduce yourself and your company and where you’re calling from today.

Andrew Sibold: [00:00:30] Yeah. So I’m calling from wonderful Beltsville, Maryland a outer ring suburb of Washington, DC. A little bit about IANA. It’s a trade association focused on intermodal freight. So one of the big things that we solve is the fragmented nature of intermodal freight, trying to unify all the different actors within intermodal freight, and then also provide a uniform framework for both analyzing it and also for people to get into the industry, learn about the industry, those type of things that [00:01:00] you’d normally associate with a trade industry or trade association.

Joe Lynch: Yep. I I ran a… I told you this and I’ve t- I said it to Anne also. Anne Reinke is the president over there at, Is that her right title?

Andrew Sibold: Yes. Yeah, CEO

Joe Lynch: C- okay, CEO. Anne Reinke used to be at TIA. I got to know her there, and then I was at a cybersecurity conference down in Cleveland, highly recommend it, and s- somebody said, “Oh, I just moved to I- I’m at IANA [00:01:30] and Anne Reinke just joined.”

And I was like, “What is that? What is IANA?” And I told her then, and I think you already know this, compared to other associations, you guys fly under the radar a little bit, but it’s such a critically important function of our, not just of, for logistics, but for the economy

Andrew Sibold: Yeah, for sure. It’s definitely probably the most important thing you’ve likely never heard of. So one of those fly behind the scenes type of organizations and industries

Joe Lynch: Yep. And it’s IANA. We’re [00:02:00] s- we’ll say IANA throughout the, but it’s Intermodal Association of North America. For those people who don’t get into it every day, Andrew, what is intermodal?

Andrew Sibold: Yeah. So I think most people would probably be familiar with kind of the big boxes that you see, especially on the big ocean freighters. So intermodal is the whole thing from flash to bang. So from the box being on a ship to it landing at the port typically put on a truck and then connected to rail where [00:02:30] it goes to a, final destination and then ends up back on a truck and then delivered.

So we’re the association that links all those different pieces. When you think of trucking, that’s typically one mode. You think of oceans as the other. We’re the folks that are in between all three, so we have a hand in each pot.

Joe Lynch: And prior to the use of the shipping container what we would do is we would empty a ship into a truck, and [00:03:00] then that truck would drive it somewhere. If it had dr- drove it to a rail station, they would unload that truck and into the rail and then they would ship that, that, that car would go across the country.

More people would unload it into another truck, and that truck would deliver it somewhere. And the more handling you have, the more loss you have. First off, it’s back-breaking work. In, and in this day and age, I don’t even know who you can get to do [00:03:30] that. It’s back-breaking work, but on top of that, things break.

When you pick them up and move them from the rail car to the truck or from the truck to the rail car, things break. Things also get stolen. It’s …Ports were really dangerous places prior to the shipping container. People re- were losing their lives falling in, fa- falling from into the water, I imagine getting crushed with all these different It was a, it was the Wild West. And when we got [00:04:00] the shipping container, it meant that somebody loaded that shipping container somewhere on the other side of the world in Europe or China, and the next time it was unloaded, it was at your facility in Chicago

Andrew Sibold: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, and, thinking about even the administrative process, right? So all the customs that goes into it it’s definitely a lot easier to keep track of a sealed box than it is, to keep a spreadsheet flowing from group to group with with different widgets on it, so

Joe Lynch: Yeah. Yeah, [00:04:30] and I will also before we hit the record button, we were talking about this, there’s a book called The Box: how the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger by Marc Levinson. I listened to it a while back, and you said you recently listened to it, and it walks through the shipping container. W- the old way was so expensive that most things could not be made overseas. Even if you said, “Hey, I found really cheap labor [00:05:00] somewhere,” it didn’t matter because the cost of logistics was so high because of that process we just discussed. And the shipping container kinda changed the world for that way.

There, it’s The world we have, the life we have would not be nearly as nice without that shipping container. And again it’s a business that sorta flies under the radar. And all those handoffs, somebody has to manage those handoffs, all these companies, and I know you guys create some of the standard [00:05:30] agreements, right?

Andrew Sibold: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So one of our big products is the UIAA which is, how those different drivers…

Joe Lynch: it’s a universal

Andrew Sibold: That’s a good question. Universal I’d have to look it up.

Joe Lynch: Yeah, it’s basically a universal contract though

Andrew Sibold: Yes. Yeah. So it’s the agreement between all the parties in the industry of, how the process works basically. Instead of having to have all these individual agreements at each interchange, you now have the, [00:06:00] one ring to rule them all, so to speak. So you have the UIA where, it’s everything from contracts, agreements, things like that.

And then also, we manage some of the driver registrations, things like that of who can pick up these containers and, are, is all their paperwork in order. We handle a lot of that standardization to try to reduce some of the costs along the way, which I think helps intermodal as well.

Joe Lynch: Yeah, and you just, you don’t want every drayage company and every rail company, every short line [00:06:30] all saying, “Oh, yeah, we– here’s our agreement.” And everyone’s kinda got their own agreement, and one, one one doesn’t a-agree with the next one, and br- pretty soon you got a whole bunch of, “I can’t release my, shipping container to that guy because we don’t have the right agreement in place.”

Andrew Sibold: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And, it also reduces insurance costs along the way too, where, you don’t have to worry about someone’s agreement not meeting the standard that you need for your insurance different [00:07:00] things like that. So yeah it’s for sure been pretty revolutionary

Joe Lynch: I don’t think you told us what you do over at at IANA. What is your title over there?

Andrew Sibold: Yeah. So I’m the director of economics and intermodal policy. A lot of that is counting beans, making sure that, all the data lines up. I think before, because we have so many different moving parts in the intermodal industry between truck, rail and ports there were different data sets that kind of all, told different [00:07:30] stories, but, measured different segments of the process.

So my big role since I’ve come on board about a year ago has been to try to unify all of that, so providing a single snapshot of what’s exactly happening in the intermodal industry and, what external factors are impacting intermodal so that our members and anyone who’s interested in intermodal freight can make the best, most informed decision possible.

Joe Lynch: And you guys also have a index for intermodal activity, right?

Andrew Sibold: We sure [00:08:00] do. Yeah, so pretty brand new. Just launched publicly back in May. It’s called the Intermodal Volume Index. So listeners to this podcast will probably be familiar with the ATA Truck Tonnage Index. But this is more for intermodal, right? So it, it does have a little bit of trucking going into it, but it also has rail as a big component things that are going on at the ports.

Essentially to provide that monthly barometer of what exactly is happening in intermodal freight.

Joe Lynch: We’ll get into that a little more in a minute. But I think it’s [00:08:30] very exciting because this type of d- this type of data is really helpful. I know a lot of times the economic indicators we get are lagging indicators, and I think yours is probably a leading indicator. Am I right to say that?

Andrew Sibold: Yes, for sure. So that has been a historic problem, I think in not just intermodal, but in freight logistics overall. Typically it takes time to aggregate and get all the survey data or the counts in. So I think the, probably [00:09:00] freshest indicator would be AAR’s, which was like a week delayed.

With ours, we’ve basically created a, mathematical process of bringing it into the present. So before, most intermodal had been about a month delayed. With the ports, it was even longer, probably about two, three months. But now we have this single snapshot which can say, this is what’s going on at the moment, and it even has a forward-looking component that allows us to forecast out.

Joe Lynch: I like it. We’ll [00:09:30] talk more about that in a minute. So Andrew, tell us a little bit about you. Where’d you grow up? Where’d you go to school? Some career highlights before you joined the mothership IANA

Andrew Sibold: Yeah. Yeah. Grew up all across the Southeast, but I probably spent most of my time in Florence, South Carolina, which is a tiny railroad town in in South Carolina right near Myrtle Beach, if people are familiar with that. So yeah, nice part of the country. Very, agricultural dependent and 95 runs through there, so a lot of transportation.

I went to Clemson for my undergrad. [00:10:00] Actually studied history yeah, which, doesn’t really do too much in terms of the math of economics, but it provides a good basis of kind of what’s happened in the

Joe Lynch: I would guess say that’s not a bad thing to have because you can kinda look across the across our history and see what’s worked and what’s, and maybe some parallels, some analogies

Andrew Sibold: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. It definitely sharpened kind of the analytical components for sure. And I joined the Army while I was in, in college, so did a joint membership with the Reserves while I was there in 2009. [00:10:30] Graduated in 2013 went active duty, spent time as a armor officer in in Fort Stewart, Georgia, and then, doing deployments in Central Asia and Eastern Europe right about the time that Russia invaded Crimea.

Yeah, and that’s where I really got my on the ground logistics training, right? ‘Cause tanks are they’re very thirsty. They require a lot of fuel and ammunition and then, food for the soldiers that maintain them. Basically, I was helping to run logistics through across Europe.

And that was actually the first time I’d, really [00:11:00] done anything with intermodal because the Army typically uses intermodal because it’s very easy to get things from, on the p- on the post to the rail. There’s typically a rail at the military base. It would go to the port of Savannah, go across the ocean to Hamburg, and then end up where we were operating in the Eastern Europe.

So yeah, that was a, a micro level view of logistics. I really enjoyed it. Was relatively good at it, I think. So I I got out of the Army [00:11:30] in, what was that? 2018. Went back to school for public policy and economics, and actually ended up at Federal Highway Administration.

Started during the pandemic when they were producing the new, historic investment, the intermo- or, sorry, not intermodal, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, or IIJA. So I helped to implement a lot of that, especially in the Midwest in Michigan, and then, later on in DC.

With the change in administration, got caught up in the whole DOGE thing. I got a [00:12:00] promotion at the wrong time. So ended up having to find something else to do, and luckily found my way to IANA where I’ve been ever since, and really enjoying it, having a lot of latitude to build these data products, something that I don’t think has historically been done before for the intermodal industry.

Joe Lynch: Yeah, and I know, You guys provide a t- or create a ton of data. I was talking to Anne Reinke. I think this was probably how I got introduced to you. And I said something about [00:12:30] TPM was going on, and she said, a lot of our information is provided to TPM and organizations like that.” And I was like, “Yeah, but you guys are fly under the radar, but you have a lot of great information.” That’s not to take anything away from TPM, but it’s just there’s all this activity and volume that you guys are now tracking and starting to provide that information and those insights so we don’t have to make blind decisions about stuff. One other thing you mentioned, intermodal [00:13:00] and logistics. I know you read the same book, which is “The Box” that we t- referenced already. I think intermodal really got a big boost initially because of the Vietnam War. That was the, it was the military shipping stuff to Southeast Asia

Andrew Sibold: Yeah. Yeah. So the, old quote by Napoleon is that army marches on its stomach. Logistics are probably like, 70, 80% of the military just getting things where they need to go. And, intermodal, I think was just a, almost a [00:13:30] perfect solution for a lot of the issues that are faced by the military, where you can get things rapidly where they need to go for relatively low cost

Joe Lynch: The military more or less invented modern logistics and maybe even ancient logistics. And every once in a while I’ll find myself watching one of those old World War II things, and I love to get the perspective of some of the German soldiers. And they would say of the Allies a tank blows up, a new one shows [00:14:00] up immediately.

So it was not just the production that was, we got really good at production, but also the logistics. And they said they couldn’t believe it. They said it’s like these material would just pop up out of nowhere. And they said if we shot one mortar round, they would shoot 20. And they said we were conserving everything.

They had way more. Not only could you produce it, but you could move it. So it was quite a feat to build all that manuf- get that manufacturing. But we had that [00:14:30] back here in the Midwest and Northeast. But moving it across the world at that time was not easy either.

Andrew Sibold: No, certainly not. Yeah. I think probably one of my favorite anecdotes about kind of military logistics was a Japanese submarine, I think, had hit a US ship and they thought they had, crippled some sort of battleship, but it was actually a ice cream ship which was supporting the invasion of, one of the Pacific Islands and providing fresh ice cream.

Joe Lynch: I saw that that was [00:15:00] another thing they said German soldiers who were being taken prisoner were being taken to the US, and they said on the ship they were served ice cream, and they said, “We c- can’t create ice cream in Germany right now, let alone on a ship crossing the ocean.” But thank goodness.

Hopefully… I know all war sucks, but we have s- a few small war- we have wars going on right now, but hopefully they’ll end here soon. But anyway I wanna talk about, again, one more time what [00:15:30] IANA does. You guys solve problems for your customers. What are those problems?

Andrew Sibold: Yeah. So I’d say I can speak probably better on, my little segment, but the big issue is fragmentation. We’ve got a lot of different actors that are in different industries, right? So trucking is not necessarily gonna care about the same issues that ports are gonna care about.

Granted, they’re attached at the hip because one helps the other. But, we provide that overarching framework to [00:16:00] not only, speak with a unified voice when it comes to, different policies in DC, but also to provide that kind of single unified snapshot of what exactly is happening so that, when a container’s coming across the dray is in place where it needs to be, and then the railroads are able to schedule out and predict when they need to have trains run.

So it’s a lot of coordination, and I think IANA probably the best analogy kind of acts as the conductor, [00:16:30] right? That framework that kind of links all these different segments together.

Joe Lynch: Yep. And I think of I’m just looking at some notes I had. There’s these handoffs that happen, and handoffs are always a problem. I don’t care what business you’re in, handoffs are a problem. You have the ocean liners, you have railroads, you have the chassis providers, dredge truckers the BCOs, the beneficial cargo owners. And they have this misalignment, and these handoffs are not always flawless. They’re– [00:17:00] I’m sure they’re a lot more flawless than they used to be. Get better every day. But as a result of those issues, we have demurrage, detention, and lost productivity. And, if somebody says, “Hey, I need this to move,” and then somebody says, “Hey it can’t move ’cause I didn’t get it.”

“I got the wrong handoff,” or an incomplete handoff or a late handoff means a problem. And when we talk about handoffs most of the problems in our lives are always upstream of us, and then [00:17:30] we’re causing the ones downstream of us, right?

Andrew Sibold: Yeah, for sure

Joe Lynch: And so IANA kinda stands in the breach and says, “Hey we will help manage all that.

We’ll create the f- the operational frameworks that allow this to work better, and we’ll create the agreements.” I think it’s what was it? The uniform intermodal interchange, I think. Is that the U-I-I?

Andrew Sibold: Uniform Intermodal Interchange Agreement, I think is

Joe Lynch: Yeah, agreement, Yeah

So that’s the So creating that, I’m sure it updates [00:18:00] all the time as needed. But rather than having every company create their own and every lawyer saying, “I wanna p- put my mark on this,” the industry trusts IANA to say, “We will make sure that a, that when your container moves from your hands to a drayage truck to a rail car to s- some facility out west, or, I, out east, that we’re gonna be okay. You’re gonna get your shipping container back,” which is a [00:18:30] miracle. A-

although I notice …I always gotta say, you drive in the country and you go, “What’s that shipping container doing out here?” It, I think some are decommissioned.

Andrew Sibold: Yes. Yeah. Yeah, for sure

Joe Lynch: I say it all the time. I have a buddy I s- was bringing football tickets to his business. And I go, “What’s this container doing here?” He goes, “I don’t know. They didn’t pick it up.” I go, “You’re being charged for it. That’s not yours. It’s n- and it’s not

old.” And

he goes, “I don’t know. [00:19:00] It’s not my problem.” And I go, “Yeah, you’re using it as a shed, so you better get your stuff out of there and call them.”

Andrew Sibold: Yeah. And I think that’s also like one of the, one of the things where, the boxes are so useful they serve other purposes, right? So that’s another thing that Ayanna does is trying to help, keep a finger on like where these things are. And, oftentimes they do end up in places that, is not necessary for the overall movement of goods.

Like with a lot of agricultural products, they need boxes, but they typically don’t end up there because [00:19:30] there isn’t a lot of population or demand there. So just helping the different actors at play to, to know where everything is and where they can get the stuff that they need.

Joe Lynch: So you guys are the ones who are basically the grease in this big process. You create the agreements, the framework, and I know there’s also you– I should, I guess we should mention it. You have the IANA Intermodal Expo, which is September 14th to 16th. That’s in Long Beach, right?

Andrew Sibold: Yes, that’s correct. Yeah, that’s our big big trade show[00:20:00]

Joe Lynch: Tons of education there, tons of networking there, and just being at the port is fantastic. I went last

Andrew Sibold: Yeah. Yeah, and we do, we’ll usually do a port tour as part of it, and it’s just, it’s wild to see, just the sheer scale of all the stuff coming in from China and, various parts of Asia into the United States at that one specific juncture, which is pretty, pretty unique

Joe Lynch: Yeah. I will also say that we sometimes forget how important these ports [00:20:30] are. Anytime you get a port somewhere, that’s means you’re going to have a tremendous amount of business in that area. And if you look at, I think Port of Savannah is the fastest growing port, or at least it was last year, I don’t know if it still is. And you go why is that?” It’s because of all the economic activity in the southeast. And there’s a chicken or the egg thing here. So if the, if there wasn’t the Port of S- Savannah, perhaps it wouldn’t have grown like that. But every time you put up [00:21:00] a port and w- with rail, you know you’re going to end up with some business in that region

Andrew Sibold: Yeah, for sure. There’s actually a pretty wonderful book called “Scale” by Geoffrey West which talks about, any number of things that kind of grow at scale. And, e-economics is kinda one of the big things with that, where, population tends to scale the economy, right? So you’ve got people moving into the southeast, the southwest.

That’s kinda where the population boom is right now in the United States, and that’s where a lot of [00:21:30] the ports are growing, between Savannah and the Gulf Coast. It’s a handoff back and forth as to what’s the fastest growing port in a given year.

Joe Lynch: Oh, yeah. You told me also the other day that you guys always have had the Intermodal Expo at Long Beach, but it’s also gonna be, would you say Houston next year?

Andrew Sibold: Yeah. So year after next, actually it’ll be at Houston. So yeah, it’s gonna, for the next, I don’t know, 10 or so years, it’s gonna go back and forth between one year in Long Beach and then in a new location that’s, intermodal [00:22:00] specific.

Joe Lynch: I think that’s great just because your members get a chance to see Houston. Obviously, Long Beach is just I went last year, and it’s just such a cool conference to go to ’cause you’re at Long Beach, California.

So you have a new index, the intermodal, what do you call, intermodal volume index. So tell us about that. What does it measure, and who is it for?

Andrew Sibold: Yeah. So it, it’s basically a barometer of, what [00:22:30] is happening in intermodal freight at a given time. It unifies all those different data sources from ports to rail to drayage and also has some macro indicators that are typically associated with intermodal freight and freight volumes in general.

So it is both a prediction and a description. So we’re– when we talk about the Intermodal Volume Index for a current month, we’re actually talking about a projection because historically the ETSO, which is our [00:23:00] equipment type, size, and ownership database, which is our big flagship data is about a month behind just because of, having to get it validated through the rails and all sorts of stuff.

But the IVI allows us to forecast it to both the current month and also into the future. So it does that through looking at kind of the seasonal fluctuations. Intermodal and I think kind of freight overall is a, it’s a highly seasonal business, right? So we talk about the different times that economic activity peaks, right around [00:23:30] Christmas and so freight before that.

In the summertime it, it peaks a little bit where you have, people, finishing out the school year, things like that. So it, it’s highly seasonal and the Intermodal Volume Index helps to predict based on that seasonality. So we can see, what’s happening and what’s expected to happen here in the near future.

And in the future, we’re also looking at a whole host of in-indicators that are gonna come out from the IVI and some of our longer term projections going forward.

Joe Lynch: So who are the [00:24:00] users of this IVI or Intermodal Volume Index? Who wants to read that?

Andrew Sibold: It’s a pretty wide cast actually. Everyone from shippers and, some of the operations folks that are looking at when they need to have capacity to– We actually had a, investment firm purchase it yesterday access to the data. So it’s a pretty wide cast. Anyone who’s interested in what’s happening in intermodal and to an extent the overall economy, right?

Because the [00:24:30] 70% of economic activity is tied to to the consumer and consumption. So intermodal is a good barometer of, the overall economy and, the health of the economy overall.

Joe Lynch: Tell us the difference between a leading indicator and a lagging indicator, and what is IVI, which the Intermodal Volume Index?

Andrew Sibold: Yeah. When we talk about indicators in economics, we’re talking about cause and effect, essentially. So an indic– a leading indicator is something that’s happening that’s a little [00:25:00] bit further up in the stream. So with intermodal freight, that typically is like domestic manufacturing new orders, things like that.

So that would be, the flash before the bang. And then a lagging indicator is typically, looking back what happened and why. So you’ll look at things like GDP, that’s a lagging indicator. The TSO data that we had historically was a bit of a lagging indicator because it described what happened about a month ago.

The [00:25:30] IBI is a bridge between all of that. So not only does it describe what’s happened in the past, but it also predicts the future based on those leading indicators. So say we had a lot of manufacturing activity as we’ve had recently. The IBI is going to print strong in that case because it’s going to say, “All right, we’re building a lot of things in the United States increasing, so we’re going to have a lot more domestic freight.”

It also looks at port activity, which for [00:26:00] intermodal is really big because, as boxes come in on the ports, they typically make it onto to rail and truck. So if there’s a lot of port activity and import activity, which there hasn’t been it will actually print like a little bit soft, where it’ll say, “Okay, not a lot is coming in on the import side, so we’re predicting imports to play less of a role and overall intermodal volumes to kinda have a little bit of a slump.”

Joe Lynch: So what is it saying right now? Are we moving in the right direction?

Andrew Sibold: Yeah. So right now it’s actually printing quite strong. I [00:26:30] think for June we’re anticipating it to be right around 106 which is about 6% higher than the historic baseline which is the pre-COVID thing that we chained it to to be able to describe what normal used to look like. So yeah

Joe Lynch: there’s a baseline you are always updating based on

Andrew Sibold: Yeah. So just based on time COVID, it, it’s a little bit more of an art than a science because it… historically you’d have it about five years back, but, five years ago was 2021, which was the height of COVID, [00:27:00] and I think hopefully we all agree that’s not what we want the world to look like in a normal.

So we had to move it a little bit further back into 2018, 2019.

Joe Lynch: Yeah, so y- so you’re seeing strong activity. And so what would this indicate? If we have a… This is a leading indicator, meaning I’m going to see things in the future. By the way, this is how I always think of the lagging. Most of the things in our lives are lagging indicators. So I weighed myself today, it’s a Tuesday. That’s a lagging indicator [00:27:30] of how well I’ve done with diet and exercise. Your bank account is a lagging indicator of your effort usually. Now, you could get, lose your job, but your income. Most of the things we see is lagging indicators. So if y- so if you say maybe a leading indicator would be steps.

I, I tracked, I got 14,000 steps on average over the last week, and I tracked what I ate. Maybe that’s more of a leading indicator than the scale. Scale just says [00:28:00] here’s what happened last week.”

Andrew Sibold: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And you could even expand that metaphor to something like, medicine, where, you know, if I visit a home where there’s a lot of people with the flu, that’s probably a leading indicator,

Joe Lynch: Yeah,

Andrew Sibold: there’s a pretty strong chance I’m gonna get the flu. Versus, once I have a fever, that’s the lagging indicator.

Okay, something’s wrong, I probably have the flu. So yeah that’s kinda how I like to think about it.

Joe Lynch: I spoke with I forgot his name now. Gosh darn it. I spoke to the [00:28:30] economist over at FreightWaves, and he said Wall Street was always very interested in their in their data because again, it’s a leading indic- leading indicator. And one way to look at it is if it’s March and February and you start seeing all sorts of flatbeds moving, a lot of times flatbeds are moving building materials.

And you might say, “Ooh, I think we’re gonna build some stuff.” And I think, I just saw this Craig Fuller has been posting, Cra- the founder over at FreightWaves, that he [00:29:00] believes that there’s some s- a lot of manufacturing activity. Now, some of it’s data centers, but some of it is hopefully, maybe, some manufacturing either growing or coming back from overseas. Probably a

Andrew Sibold: Yeah. Yeah. And there’s actually a really interesting story in that data. If you’ll look at the import volumes that are, produced by the Census Bureau, they typically do it in dollar value versus how we do it, which is in TEUs. You’ll actually [00:29:30] see that the dollar value of imports is increasing even as the total number of boxes coming in is going down.

So anytime you have something that doesn’t intuitively make sense, you’re like, “Okay why is that happening,” right? You would think more money for imports means more stuff coming in. But actually, I would say that the– what’s causing that is the increase in kind of high-value small things that, typically don’t take up a lot of freight.

So a lot of that [00:30:00] manufacturing activity that’s going on in the United States is the, what you’d call higher-end manufacturing. Be it chips or data centers to support AI it’s a new version of manufacturing that doesn’t move quite as much freight, but has actually been a boon for intermodal here especially as imports have weakened.

We’ve been able to make up a lot of room with with domestic freight, which has been a lot of those things that, go into data centers are pretty sensitive, so they typically end up [00:30:30] in boxes just to avoid exposure to the elements, theft, things like that. We’ve actually seen a lot of strength in intermodal because of that.

Joe Lynch: Yep. I know the data centers are a thing. I know after COVID, there was a push first by the Biden administration bringing the CHIPS Act, so we’re gonna b- do more of that type of manufacturing here. I think the issue you run into is none of this stuff happens quickly, and i- if it happens at all. So I know there’s some failures in some of that. Some [00:31:00] big companies that said, “Oh, yeah, we’re gonna do this.” Doesn’t necessarily mean it’s gonna work, and I always say that it’s a really long time. If you say, “Hey, I’m gonna move some manu- automotive manufacturing stuff back from China or back from wherever,” you have to have a facility somewhere that’s they can handle it. A lot of times it’s gonna be a brand-new facility custom-built for that function. You’ll have to probably get the [00:31:30] city, county, state to say, “Yes, this is a place you can build expressways, power, water a workforce development program,” probably some sort of tax agreement so you can put it there. It’s not easy.

Now, something that is a little easier if you say, “Hey, there’s capacity in the US, there’s capacity in China and Mexico, and I wanna move some number of it back here because of the tariffs,” or so- some other reason. Maybe it’s just [00:32:00] more of a security thing. Yeah, okay, that’s easy. I just move capacity from here to there.

That’s… I- if the capacity exists. It’s the high-end, difficult, complex manufacturing that doesn’t move quick.

Andrew Sibold: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And that, that’s the story of manufacturing overall, right? Where there’s this concept in economics called product lifestyle, where, something new comes out, it’s highly specialized, you have to have a highly trained workforce for [00:32:30] it. And that’s, think about Silicon Valley and how all that’s come about.

But then as time goes on, those products are pretty ubiquitous, and that’s where you see costs starting to come down as the manufacturing kinda works out the kinks, and then it becomes standardized. And then, a lot of times you’ll see it move overseas because then labor becomes the main cost, not necessarily the components or the manufacturing itself.

So that’s been a big driver for sure.

Joe Lynch: I always say, Andrew, that, Our politicians have a manufacturing fetish. They just love the [00:33:00] idea that, “Oh we need good manufacturing jobs.” And I think what they’re hearkening back to was post-World War II America, where it’s like it doesn’t matter if you got a college degree. If you’re a hard worker, you jump in and go make a great living in Detroit or Cleveland or New York.

There’s all sorts of good manufacturing jobs, and you can move right on up and grab your piece of the American dream. Even as this stuff [00:33:30] moves back, it’s gonna be automated. It’s gonna be different types of jobs. And I think in a lot of ways as we’ve gotten m- if we invest more and more into our automation and all the tools that make manufacturing safe and f- easy compared to the past there just aren’t as many jobs. I, I was an automotive guy for many decades. I won’t talk how many, but the manufacturing plants changed so much in my 20-some years in that [00:34:00] business. A lot of times those people were doing backbreaking work, difficult work. They were doing just work that you’d say, “God, that guy’s gotta crouch all day long and put that screw into that piece of metal?” They realized over time that, yeah, that guy who’s trying to crouch and do that, he can’t do a good job because he’s sore. C- and then you start to realize we’re going through people. And over time, the jobs became ergonomic. They became safe, and a [00:34:30] lot of that’s because we built machinery that’s custom-built for th- that function, and that’s the way things are gonna be built when we come back.

So those facilities, whatever they might do that come back from China, they’re gonna be highly automated. They can count on that.

Andrew Sibold: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I think automation’s probably the largest story in terms of job loss in manufacturing rather than, outsourcing

Joe Lynch: Yeah and they always say the machines don’t care where they live, if they live in Mexico or China or here. Anyway, so [00:35:00] this new inner volume, the Intermodal Volume Index is this a paid subscription? Do I get it every month? How does that work?

Andrew Sibold: Yeah. So we’re actually revamping kinda how we’ve offered a lot of our data products. We’ll announce the IBI as like a headline, which is, goes out into the public, the press at the start of each month. And then with our monthly report, which is our, big data product right now, we kinda go into, to greater depth of what exactly is driving [00:35:30] that.

And then we kinda do or for me, it’s fun, right? Of, was the prediction accurate? If it wasn’t why not? We’ll go into, to greater depth on kinda the components and the prediction behind it. But moving on into the future, we’re actually going to be launching a dashboard rather than a, PDF report.

For young people like myself, it’ll be less reading, which is good, right? Like we’re, we tend to be very visual

Joe Lynch: Oh, nobody wants to read anymore. I know I, I listen to books now. I find it hard to sit down and read a book.

Andrew Sibold: Yeah, it’s [00:36:00] like that, that five-minute attention span, right? So yeah, we’re– we’ll be launching a dashboard that’ll have, all these indicators. It’ll be pretty interactive so people can kinda play around with it, see what’s happened in the past see what’s driving, whatever’s going on.

And then the monthly report will become a lot shorter. It’ll just be, a few paragraphs on what exactly is happening and why. So we’re kinda looking for that to launch here at the end of the year.

Joe Lynch: So one other thing I wanna talk to you about while I got [00:36:30] you here. We’ve had the war in the Middle East, which has driven up the price of oil, and boy, when you fill up your tank, you notice.

Andrew Sibold: Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Lynch: and so diesel prices jumped up, so all of a sudden intermodal became much more attractive f- to a lot of companies. So I think m- most people think of intermodal as coming, it c- came from the ocean, and y- some, s- some number of things come from the port, and they get [00:37:00] on rail. Other things get on a truck, and you ship that truck, or the truck ships the container across the country. Do you see a jump from truck to rail when the price of oil goes up like it has over the last couple months?

Andrew Sibold: Yeah, that’s a really interesting question because it gets to the heart of what is happening currently and how it’s somewhat unique, right? So historically, when we’ve seen oil price shocks, which, [00:37:30] knock on wood, haven’t been as strong as this one you’ll actually just kinda see demand overall go down.

So intermodal goes down with trucking, but not necessarily as steeply because it’s more contractual, so it’s a little bit more insulated to those price hikes than the spot rate driven truck. But this time has been quite unique because you’ve had the tariff effect, which has been weighing on imports.

So that’s caused a lot of overcapacity on intermodal, which like almost [00:38:00] at the perfect time you had the oil shock come through. We’ve got a lot of capacity on these well-established routes for intermodal, and now you have a lot of trucking that’s become cost prohibitive not only from the diesel price, but also from some of the immigration policies that have come about.

And intermodal’s just been perfectly positioned at most of those routes to, to snap up a lot of the share a lot faster. We’re seeing intermodal actually growing in a scenario that normally we would [00:38:30] see intermodal falling. So it’s been pretty unique and pretty interesting to watch.

Joe Lynch: Yeah, there’s a peace agreement and deal. We’re talking 6/16 here today. Who knows if that’s still the case? It’s just such a volatile region. We would love to have stability in all these prices and be able to predict the future reliably. You can’t blame Andrew for all of this.

It’s

not all his– It’s not entirely his fault.

Andrew Sibold: No, no

Joe Lynch: It’s difficult, though, for companies to make decisions about [00:39:00] how do I effectively and efficiently move my stuff across the country? And when I say effectively, meaning y- you’re getting it done r- the same way I have– I’m confident that it’s gonna get there on time, they’re not gonna damage it. And the efficiency is kinda more of a cost side. Will this IVI, s- the Intermodal Volume Index, help me make some of those decisions?

Andrew Sibold: Yeah, for sure. And that’s part of the logic behind having [00:39:30] those macro indicators just so that you can see kinda as things happen, how it ripples throughout the intermodal and freight world. It’ll hopefully strip out a lot of the seasonality and allow people to make decisions that are, based on this current moment and not, what’s happened in the past.

It actually provides you with a pretty objective view of, what’s going on and where you can expect capacity to tighten. And another thing of, when to lock in rates, right? That’s another big [00:40:00] thing where, you know, if we see the volume or the index jump, you know that, there’s gonna be more capacity, so probably a good idea to, to lock in that rate.

And I think going forward even with, say, this peace deal goes through and everyone’s happy and, magically we’re able to just start pumping oil again out of that part of the world, insurance rates are still going to be quite high because Iran has shown that they have the ability to shut down the Strait of Hormuz.

And, the [00:40:30] damage to a lot of the oil infrastructure, not only in Iran but also in Ukraine and Russia you’ll have overall global prices remaining elevated, I anticipate for the next few years because it takes years to make the repairs and get all that capacity back online.

Joe Lynch: Yes. Yes. Yes. I’ve heard about this where people s- think that you can shut down a pump pumping out of the ground and say, “Oh, yeah, we’ll just turn it back on in a few months.” No, you’re not gonna turn it back … Especially certain parts of the world. I know Russia [00:41:00] has very difficult environment there to keep pumping, and so i- it’s not easy.

And whether we like it or not, we’re still tied to oil as a component of our economy that is critically important

Andrew Sibold: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. It’s still very much the lifeblood of the economy. And, you have everything from fertilizer to plastic parts and things like that rely on oil that I think most people don’t think about

Joe Lynch: Yep. Yep. And hopefully we get all that straightened out. And you mentioned [00:41:30] trucking capacity. So we had some changes. So there was people driving in this country who we didn’t feel comfortable dri- driving, so we reduced head count of drivers. So fewer drivers means less capacity in that space, just at a time when we started to see more demand. So that’s what w- everybody in the trucking business is saying, “Hallelujah, it’s been the longest freight recession ever.” And and shippers are I know shippers [00:42:00] are looking with some concern how high and how fast are these prices gonna go up. And what you just c- mentioned is maybe there’s some excess capacity that you can take advantage of on the rail. I think also putting stuff on rail isn’t for everything, obviously. You have to have enormous volumes. So it’s, I think one truckload is four with, one rail car could take the equivalent of four trucks

Andrew Sibold: Yeah. Yeah, [00:42:30] especially if they’re stacked boxes, for sure. Yeah

Joe Lynch: So anyway, I wanna wrap this bad boy up, and then I wanna get your final thoughts on the topic. So I’m talking to my friend Andrew Seibold. It’s– I wanna keep wanting to say Seibold, but it’s Seibold. And it’s how to predict the 2026 intermodal rebound with IANA’s Andrew Seibold. And Andrew and IANA have a brand-new intermodal volume index, [00:43:00] and this is a leading indicator, meaning this is telling you a, what’s going on now, but also what’s gonna happen next week, next month, which is rare.

So much of our, so much of our data that we see is a lagging indicator, which is helpful, and I’m sure Andrew is always adjusting his information based on what he sees from the lagging. But we need to know this. We need to know so we can make better decisions about how we move our supply [00:43:30] chains along. So we talked a little bit about what IANA does. So IANA has the back of everybody working in the intermodal place, in intermodal space, whether it’s the ocean people, the railroads, chassis providers, drayage truckers, the beneficial cargo owners, th- that the shippers we’ll call them and all the issues that they run into with misalignment with causes demurrage, detention, lack of productivity. They make the interchange agreements that make– [00:44:00] They’re the grease that makes all this go, but they have s- a number of standards. The intermodal– what do you call that again, Andrew? It’s the intermodal, universal intermodal

Andrew Sibold: Yeah, Universal Intermodal Interchange Agreement.

Joe Lynch: It’s a tongue twister. But

that’s basically the agreement that everybody uses across the country. And it’s not that IANA just sat down one day and said, “We wrote it.” No, we get every- they got all the players and said let’s make the handoffs as efficient as possible by using a lot of [00:44:30] standardization.” And somebody has to do that. Somebody has to do that, otherwise we would be really n- really impacted negatively by that lack of standardization. One other thing. Intermodal’s become– It’s always been very important to certain industries, but I think also when we start looking at trucking, the price is going up, all of a sudden intermodal is going to be very attractive for some players.

And I think also, we didn’t talk about it, [00:45:00] but rail is a little cleaner and a little greener than than trucking. So c-companies looking to meet their sustainability goals are gonna s- continue to look at intermodal and rail, and I think that’s part of the reason we need some sort of indicator that tells us about, of, about whether rail’s going to be the right solution for us.

And again, IANA’s the one who can give you that information. We also talked about you guys have the [00:45:30] Intermodal Expo, which is going to be at Long Beach. I went last year. Highly recommend it. Very cool conference. And what’s nice is you’re right there. You’re right at Long Beach. You’re walking around.

Like, when you get there, I didn’t get a car for that. You just sh-show up and e-everything’s within walking distance. California’s not so bad either. But you also get a sense for the importance of… It’s at Long Beach, but the LA port’s right next door. This is ground zero for our [00:46:00] supply chains. There’s some, there’s certain places like that or Chicago and Phoenix, Chattanooga, that are down in Texas, that are critically important. This is the big daddy. I think that’s about it. Also we mentioned the book. Highly recommend the book called “The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World’s Economy Bigger” by Marc Levinson. You also mentioned this book’s called “Scale.” I’ll put a link to that one, too. Enough of my [00:46:30] blather. Put a big old bow on this, Andrew

Andrew Sibold: Yeah. Yeah. So I– you did a very good job covering it. I would say that, the big reason of why to care about the Intermodal Volume Index is it’ll help to shape how you negotiate the supply chain. Right? Intermodal’s not gonna be the solution all the time, and I don’t think that anyone would expect it to be.

But, w- more information you have, the better informed you can make a decision. And, there are those times where intermodal makes sense over trucking, and we wanna make sure that people have an, have [00:47:00] a as informed an, a view as possible. And then also, helping to get the word out about what’s happening in intermodal and how it could help to solve some of these solutions.

Joe Lynch: I love it. I love it. So why should somebody join IANA?

Andrew Sibold: Yeah. Any sort of trade, trade association’s gonna be beneficial to the industry overall, but you as an individual would get access to, not only some of these committees that, that, produce the things like the UIAA you also get to add [00:47:30] your voice to the conversation. We’re always listening to our members, listening for feedback on, things that are happening in Washington, also things that are happening on the state level and, some companies.

I think that, it’s a very good opportunity for you to add your voice to the mix and to also get better informed about the industry overall and, some potential opportunities, especially at meetings like Expo where we have a large concentration of members

Joe Lynch: I love it. I love it. So Andrew, I’ll put a link to your LinkedIn profile, link to your [00:48:00] website. Any other link you and your go-to-market team give me, I’ll put those in the show notes. And thank you so much for taking the time

Andrew Sibold: Yeah. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it

Joe Lynch: Yeah, no problem. You’re welcome. And thank all of you for listening to my show. Your support’s very much appreciated. Until next time, onward and upward