Transportation and Logistics Council | 9
the other side. The regulations have been in-
creased with homeland security. That is an
ever-changing, everyday problem – just try-
ing to keep even with what the requirements
are, so we’ve been putting a little more em-
phasis in the international trade area. That’s
intermodal, of course, and intermodal has
become one of the largest segments of trans-
portation here in the United States. But the
intermodal and multi-modal transportation
areas are particularly difficult, because you’re
dealing with multiple transporters, multiple
carriers, multiple intermediaries like freight
forwarders and NBOs, and so on, and also
a ton of regulations. So, this is an area where
we’ve actually been getting more inquiries
and trying to give people a lot more assis-
tance and support and in fact, we have what
we call an international trade primer, one of
the workshops at our annual conference, and
we’ve got some top people to help our people
out with that.
That’s where I see the growth and the
changes. Also, there are less and less small car-
riers in the United States. We’ve had a lot of
mergers and acquisitions and consolidations
and it’s getting to the point where instead of
having 20 or 30 major LPO carriers in the
United States, we have four or five and rail-
roads are doing the same thing. We used to
have 30 or 40 railroads in the United States
and we’re down to five. One of the side ef-
fects of that is that the bargaining power has
shifted – you cannot go out and get a bet-
ter deal. I’m not suggesting that it’s an illegal
monopoly or anything like that.
You’re going to have to deal with FedEx
freight or UPS freight or Yellow Roadway
if you want your goods moved and handled
across the entire United States. So, that is
changing the dynamics of things.
