If you're a third-party logistics company, transportation broker or shipper and are looking to ship by intermodal for the first time, logistics company Vexure has a deal for you: great service for a premium price.

Through Vexure subsidiary TRT Carriers Inc., whose services are ideal for those looking to the transportation spot market, the goal isn't to sell cheap. It's to sell value. "We're a niche provider, we sell a premium service to our customers," said Vexure President and COO Tom Piatak. "Our goal is the ability to say 'yes' more often to our customers' freight." Executing that philosophy has translated into quantifiable results. TRT started out in 2002 with zero revenue; by the end of the year it had generated $10 million.

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Tampa, Fla.-based Quality Distribution is perhaps best known for its liquid bulk subsidiary Quality Carriers Inc. and is heavily into trucks. But that may change soon, as Quality Distribution CEO Thomas Finkbiner is looking seriously at intermodal.

"We're trying to expand the use of tank containers in our business," Finkbiner said. "In talking to our customers and looking at their needs, we think it makes sense to switch from truck to intermodal."

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Third-party logistics provider Transplace, which formed in 2000 by combining the logistics subsidiaries of six publicly held trucking companies, generated roughly $2 billion in freight business in 2002 - and $90 million of it was intermodal business. The reason: intermodal transportation, has provided consistency and reliability over the last two years, says Transplace Chairman, President and CEO Jun-Sheng Li.

Two years ago some intermodal lanes were turning in on-time performance measures of below 90 percent, Li said. However, the railroads have slowly improved to above 95 percent and as high as 98-99 percent. Li also noted that his company monitors the performance of different intermodal programs such as NACS, EMP, and CSX Intermodal, and the level of service among them "doesn't vary all that much."

The Internet-based logistics company is owned by J.B. Hunt Transport Services, Covenant Transport, M.S. Carriers, Swift Transportation, U.S. Xpress Enterprises and Werner Enterprises. Its web-enabled platform offers shippers and carriers several logistics and transportation management services, from complete outsourcing to single-shipment transportation assistance. The company's goal is to combine visibility from its shipping customers with capacity from over 3,000 carriers to achieve more efficient logistics and transportation management.

Li, who was formerly president of J.B. Hunt Logistics, said combining the six companies was really a chance to combine technology to create density. "Each company had significant business already, so this really strengthened the offerings to all our customers on the 3PL side," Li said.

Because of the company's background, most of Transplace's Fortune 1000 customers are truckload dominant. "Some of our new customers are into LTL and need more of a logistics cross-docking, mode-optimization functionality," he said. "But most of the time, we're able to consolidate LTL into truckload, thereby even further reducing their transportation costs."

But with service improvements and capacity investments in the rail industry, intermodal has steadily been gaining favor at Transplace. "Truckload is much more cost-effective than LTL but intermodal is more cost-effective than truckload," Li said. "So we looked at our customer base freight to say, those moves can really be converted from truckload to intermodal. And I think it's important that we are playing the role of transportation manager because if you leave it to the customers, they're used to doing what they're always doing. They don't really think about how to make business changes to take advantage of intermodal."

Li's company has performed intermodal lane-mode analysis for its customers and is able to recommend which lanes make sense. "By monitoring the service, we've found that intermodal is satisfactory for many customers but a lot less expensive" than truckload, he said. "That's what's enabled us to convert so much freight onto the railroads."

Li concedes that the $90 million in intermodal revenue that Transplace achieved in 2002 is a "drop in the bucket" of the $2 billion taken in overall last year. But he said, "we see a lot of opportunity to convert more" in 2003. "I think we can easily add another $10 million to $15 million this year."

Li estimates there's currently $140 billion in over-the-road freight business and that, in light of improvements in intermodal service among all Class 1 railroads, roughly 10 percent of that is convertible to intermodal. However, "I don't think the railroads are prepared for that in terms of capacity," he said. "Incrementally you can talk about adding more freight but only up to a certain point."

To improve intermodal efficiency, there's still more that needs to be done, Li says. "The railroads need to figure out a way to synchronize their interchange schedules. They need to schedule trains in such a way that minimizes gaps when they interline freight."

Even under new partnerships among Eastern and Western carriers that are meant to pare down transit times to better compete with long-haul trucks, "you lose visibility at the interchange," Li said. "And that's the problem today, in terms of tracking and tracing, for the IMCs. Railroads still have to do a lot of work. It's not as transparent as it should be."

What can the railroads do to make tracking and tracing information more visible? "I'm not sure they've put a lot of focus in this area so I think they just need to give it more of a priority," Li said. "Individually the railroads do fine but once it changes hands, the information becomes very cumbersome.