The Contrarian View: The phrase “Where’s the Beef” originated from a Wendy’s commercial in 1984 and quickly became a “cultural catchphrase” used to express skepticism or doubt about the substance of something. It is often used humorously in various settings and situations (especially political campaigns) to question the integrity of an idea or proposal.
One of the supposed justifications for the UP-NS merger is the need to more efficiently handle large volumes of so-called transcontinental rail traffic. At one time U.S. railroads moved substantial amounts of international steamship container traffic from West Coast ports to ports along the East coast as well as to inland destinations in the Midwest.
A land-bridge was a port-to-port movement of containers replacing the middle portion of an ocean voyage that began in Asia before the first U.S. port-of-call and extended beyond the second (by water to Europe). The Santa Fe Railway developed the first land-bridge container train, linking Asia with Europe, using Santa Fe and Penn Central lines in the early 1970s. This original multimodal concept produced two successful variations (or spinoffs) called mini-land bridge and micro-land bridge.
Mini-land bridge was a port-to-port movement replacing one end of an ocean voyage. It was characterized as using a land transport mode, usually rail, to serve a second port from an initial port of call. One example was a carrier calling at a southern California port offering mini-land bridge to and from Houston rather than calling at Houston direct.
Micro-land bridge service would operate between a U.S. port of call (on the West Coast) and an inland intermodal hub (which may or may not also be a port). Chicago is the single largest inland hub for micro-land bridge service, but Memphis and Atlanta also developed into a major destination in their own rights from the West Coast over the years.
But as they say, the only thing constant in the universe is change. The Chicago micro-land bridge traffic remains strong as ever. Chicago claims the title of the largest inland port in the U.S., based on the annual volume of containers in TEUs handled there. But whatever happened to the East Coast inland destination traffic? The short answer is it is going away, being replaced by a new version of the mini-land bridge using East Coast ports as the U.S. port of entry rather than West Coast ports.
In the long term, this shift can likely be explained in part by infrastructure. One example is the widening of the Panama Canal in 2016 which allowed larger vessels to transit the waterway. Another factor here is the continuing shift of production capacity from the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) south into the eleven member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). This shift has encouraged increased use of the Suez Canal route to connect Asia with North America. (ASEAN represents the fifth largest economy in the world based on GDP right after Japan, and one of the world’s fastest growing.)
At the same time, there has been an impressive ongoing expansion of container facilities on the East Coast including improved access such as port dredging and bridge raising. These changes have dramatically increased the ability of eastern ports to handle more cargo despite higher overall transit times from Asian ports.
We would argue it also marked the beginning of the end for the need of the kind of transcontinental rail services referred to as micro-land bridge.
By 2030, East Coast ports are expected to account for 50% of U.S. containerized imports, up from 38% in 2015 (Source: UN Trade & Development website, 2024). We calculated the current actual split based on five largest West Coast ports (based on 2024 actual teu volume) versus the eight largest East Coast ports. (Houston was specifically excluded.) The results showed almost 53 percent of total container imports via the West Coast versus 47 percent via the East Coast. This means the need for 10,000-ft Union Pacific double stack trains struggling to transit the Meridian Speedway will soon be effectively over.
In 2024 six of the top ten U.S. container ports by twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) of containerized volume were all located along the east and gulf coasts. The top U.S. port by container volume was Los Angeles followed in second place by Long Beach by a respectable margin. However, literally right behind Long Beach was the Port of New York and New Jersey. Would NY/NJ have come in second in volume if it were not for October’s East Coast longshoreman’s strike in 2024?
Ranked number three is the traditional East Coast heavyweight, the Port of New York and New Jersey. But what surprises us is the rest of the top ten rankings. Ranked fourth was the Port of Savannah (with about 60% of Long Beach’s annual volume) with the Port of Virginia ranked fifth. The Houston Port Authority comes in at #6 and the Port of Charleston at #7.
In 2001 according to Bureau of Transportation Statistics the Port of Savannah was ranked eighth for total container volume among all U.S. ports.
Arguably the most impressive port “renaissance” on the East Coast has occurred at the Port of Savannah, operated by the Georgia Ports Authority. The Port of Savannah’s website now advertises the port as “The single largest container terminal in America.”
In a study released in September 2025, Georgia Tech researchers found shippers save money, boost reliability and achieve comparable average transit times when they land Atlanta-bound cargo at the gateway port of Savannah, instead of a West Coast port. The complete version of this Study is now available on the Port of Savannah’s website. It makes for very interesting reading.
Savannah (and the state of Georgia) now basically represents everything the Port of Los Angeles (and the state of California) does not.
The OOCL Iris became the largest capacity vessel to ever call at the Port of Savannah, arriving at Savannah’s Garden City Terminal on February 25 of this year. With a maximum capacity of 16,828 TEU (twenty-foot equivalent) container units, the OOCL Iris is 1,204 feet long and 167 feet wide. The CMA CGM Marco Polo held the previous maximum capacity record at the Port of Savannah, at 16,022 TEUs.
Atlanta is the largest metropolitan area (and consuming market) in the southeast. It is one of the five Top 10 MSA’s located along the East Coast and is ranked by Colliers International as the fourth largest industrial market in the U.S. (just ahead of New York City metro and right behind Dallas-Ft. Worth). It is located approximately 248 highway miles from Savannah. The two cities are also connected by rail (both CSX and NS). GPA also operates a major automobile port at Brunswick, GA.
Nearby Top 25 Industrial Markets include Charlotte, N.C. (#14) and Memphis, Tenn. (#19).
Savannah Port is home to the biggest single-terminal container area, one of its kind in North America. It includes two deep-water terminals called the Garden City Terminal and the Ocean Terminal.
The Garden City Terminal is reportedly the 4th busiest container handling facility in the U.S, covering over 1200 acres and handling millions of tons of containerized cargo each year. The Port of Savannah is reportedly the closest and fastest by rail to the major population centers of Atlanta, Birmingham, Charlotte, Memphis and Orlando.
The Mason Mega Rail Terminal is the largest on-port intermodal facility in the Western Hemisphere. CSX and Norfolk Southern serve the facility. The 85-acre facility provides ample capacity for growth, with 24 miles of on-terminal track.
Georgia Ports Authority operates two new inland ports. These were developed in an attempt to avoid congested intermodal terminals in Atlanta. The Appalachian Regional Port sits is on 42 acres in Northwest Georgia’s Murray County. The port is a joint effort of the state of Georgia, Murray County, the Georgia Ports Authority and CSX Transportation. The inland rail terminal, which opened in 2018, “provides a powerful gateway to global markets.” It is located about 45 mils southeast of Chattanooga, TN home of the new VW assembly plant.
The planned 104-acre Blue Ridge Connector will be GPA’s second inland port project. It will provide a direct link to the Port of Savannah via Norfolk Southern. At full build-out, the rail terminal will feature 18,000 feet of working track. With a top capacity of 150,000 container lifts per year, the facility will offset 600 roundtrip highway miles for every container moved by rail.
Savannah has had direct rail service to Memphis, TN for some time and recently gained through service to Chicago via both CSX and NS.
The obvious supply chain advantage here for Savannah is the ability to facilitate a strategy of strategic postponement by holding inventory at or near the port in relatively close proximity to end users in major metro areas like Atlanta. The short highway distances would also facilitate more delivery by truck on a J-I-T basis with smaller economic order quantities.
The state of Georgia’s major export crops include cotton and peanuts (both of which fit nicely inside steamship containers). The South is also home to a growing number of foreign brand automotive assembly plants. Most are within a day’s drive of the Port of Savanah. These include a Kia Motors assembly plan in West Point and a Hyundai plant in Ellabell, GA. There are four assembly plants in Alabama, owned by Mercedes-Benz, Honda, Hyundai and a joint Mazda/Toyota plant. Nissan Motors operates assembly plants in the states of Mississippi and Tennessee.
The principal facilities of the fifth ranked Port of Virginia are four marine terminals, all on the harbor of Hampton Roads:
- Norfolk International Terminals (NIT) at Norfolk, Va.
- Portsmouth Marine Terminal (PMT) at Portsmouth, Va.
- Newport News Marine Terminal (NNMT) at Newport News, Va.
- Virginia International Gateway (VIG) at Portsmouth, Va.
Seven years after the Port of Virginia launched a $450 million dredging project to become the deepest and widest harbor on the East Coast, the massive endeavor will be completed by the end of this year as the shipping channels are dredged to 55 feet deep.
The Port of Virginia’s ace-in-the-hole is the Heartland Corridor, a new high capacity inland rail route connecting the Port directly with Midwest cities of Columbus, Ohio and Chicago. The project involved raising clearances in 28 tunnels and 24 other overhead obstacles. The new routing reduced travel times from port facilities in Virginia to Chicago to three days, improving on the previous four-day travel time and reduced the distance traveled by 250 miles. The underlying rail carrier here is Norfolk Southern.
The Port of Houston is already linked with West Coast ports by direct rail on both Union Pacific and BNSF. Then there is of course the direct water option since Houston is already a deep-water port on the Gulf of Mexico with scheduled containership service.
Los Angeles to Houston was originally an integral part of Southern Pacific’s famed Sunset Route. This route later gave Union Pacific an inherent advantage in the L.A.-Houston market. But maybe not anymore. In July 2025 BNSF announced a new expedited intermodal service between Hobart Yard in Los Angeles and Houston’s Pearland Yard. BNSF is also reportedly testing a new rail shuttle service between the Port of Houston and the Inland Port at Alliance, Tex.
The template for this new shuttle service could be the inland ports operated by the Georgia Ports Authority. The BNSF’s main line running directly between Houston and Fort Worth is the former Santa Fe Galveston/Fort Worth subdivisions.
On the West Coast Oakland, Seattle and Tacoma round out the top 10 but the East Coast has an impressive collection of secondary ports including Miami, Philadelphia, Port Everglades, Baltimore and Jacksonville.
The Canadian East Coast port of Halifax, N.S. has a magnificent deep-water harbor. It is the first port of call on the North American East Coast for ships coming from Europe and using the Suez Canal. It is now home to two container ports and is connected by rail to the rest of Canada by CN.
Thanks to CN, Memphis becomes a unique logistics market with direct rail service from two Canadian West Coast ports as well as one Canadian East Coast port plus direct connections with the Port of Savannah.
Few long-distance commodity moves by rail carload approach the land bridge phenomenon. We would argue these few moves are more regional than transcontinental. Substantial amounts of Powder River Basin coal still moves for now in unit trains from the Basin to generating plants in Texas and the Southeast. However, most of this tonnage flows through the Kansas City gateway not Chicago. Kansas City is the top-rated U.S. rail gateway for tonnage due to large volumes of coal and grain moving through that location. This traffic remains at risk from competition from alterative fossil fuels like oil and natural gas, as well as a resurgence nuclear power industry.
We understand there is a substantial number of ethanol unit trains being operated on a regular basis from producing facilities (refineries) located in Cedar Rapids and Des Moines, Iowa. Both locations are served by the Iowa Interstate which hauls the trains to Peoria, IL where they are interchanged to Norfolk Southern for delivery to East Coast fuel-producing refineries. Rail service here appears to be acceptable.
This is not technically a transcontinental move but could be described as a rather long distance inter-regional move. It is interesting to note that it represents a two-line haul easily moving across the heart of the infamous “watershed.”
Finished automobile transportation is a true railroad success story. It would have to be described as something of a bifurcated market. Individual carloads move from assembly plants in the Midwest to the mixing center established by the railroads at the IHB Gibson Yard in Hammond, IN. From here they are assembled into dedicated unit trains moving intact to western destinations. The incumbent carrier is currently Union Pacific making this a single line haul (no interchange required).
One smaller transcontinental move is lumber and building products flowing from the Pacific Northwest into eastern markets. BNSF appears to be doing a good job serving this market. This market is highly dependent on housing starts and home mortgage rates.
Both railroads handle large quantities of grain products from the farm belt to both Gulf Coast and West Coast ports for export.
The glory days of “The Salad Bowl Express” of National Geographic fame are long gone. However, BNSF continues to handle a substantial amount of long-haul traffic in frozen French fries out Washington State’s Columbia River Valley. Trinity Rail’s 64-foot giant-sized refrigerated boxcars are an impressive sight as they roll through Downers Grove at track speed.
Given the growing amount of internet shopping and need for subsequent packaging, brown paper should be a growth market, but the jury is still out on this one.
It is obvious that the freight rail carload franchise has become a niche business catering to a fairly limited number of customers and constituencies. It is clearly a volume driven business. Single car customers tend to suffer from lower levels of service quality regardless of what railroad they are on. How would a transcontinental merger solve this? Like we said, “Where’s the beef?”
Both BNSF and Union Pacific have so far resisted efforts to reduce rates on long-haul double stack trains carrying steamship containers cross country. If the shift from west to East Coast ports continue which western railroad stands the most to lose? I would argue both do as standalone companies. However, depending on how much of the East Coast import business moves by rail versus truck then the two eastern railroads stand to benefit somewhat. However, truck competition for the final mile of the East Coast port business will be far more intense than anything railroads have seen on the West Coast.
Finally, a request for all the pundits out there, can we please get real on all these silly projections of increased intermodal traffic. When it comes to intermodal to coin an old political phrase, “it’s the service stupid.” No service no growth! We all know that intermodal has high service requirements, much higher than the typical carload shipment. JB Hunt Transport frequently comments publicly that poor service on the eastern railroads is inhibiting intermodal growth in the region. Running one 10,000-foot train a day is not going to accomplish very much here.
Triple Crown’s Roadrailer service was an excellent example of how good service can capture high value short-haul intermodal business even within the confines of the mythological “watershed.”
The highway system was designed and constructed more recently than the rail network and serves present day markets more directly. Thus, circuity of rail routes, especially for short hauls in the East and Midwest, is a major factor here. According to the 1978 USDOT publication “A Prospectus for Change in the Freight Railroad Industry”, circuity of the rail network was 18 percent greater than the highway network.
Originally released in 1976, the National Intermodal Network Feasibility Study provided for the first time a comprehensive and detailed view of the market for which rail and trucks are competitive. In our opinion the Study’s most important finding revealed that “the flow volumes are large in the aggregate but highly dispersed.” In other words, lots of dots on the map but hard to connect them in a viable route structure.
We believe this is not good news for a rail system that requires large volumes of traffic running on a limited number of fixed routes to be successful. Recall that railroads originally tried to meet the needs of a “highly dispersed” network with their original network of a piggyback ramp in almost every town in America. (The January-February 1977 edition of The Official Railway Guide listed almost 50 piggyback ramps in the state of Iowa alone.) That concept failed miserably.
Without including a serious discussion of actual, real world service parameters, playing the game of connecting the dots by drawing lines on a map doesn’t cut it. We all understand that intermodal service is driven by volumes. If Vena is serious then show us your service parameters, i.e. how many trains per day are proposed for each route, how many daily loads are required to operate a train and the number of annual loads required to establish a new terminal or to sustain an existing one. Also, I would be curious as to what the split might be between opening new terminals versus simply increasing train volumes between existing terminals.
One more interesting random thought: The Milwaukee-Racine-Waukesha Combined Statistical Area, located in southeast Wisconsin, is the largest population center in the state of Wisconsin. Colliers International ranked Milwaukee as the 23rd largest industrial market in the U.S.. It is also one of the largest metro areas in the U.S. (after San Diego) without direct rail intermodal service today. It could easily be described as an intermodal “black hole.”
This was not always the case. In 1979 CNW briefly considered operating a Milwaukee section of their Falcon intermodal service to the West Coast. In 1979 C&NW still had two circus ramps in the area, one at Butler yard and the other down at Florida Street near the Port of Milwaukee. The Milwaukee Road also had an intermodal terminal in Milwaukee during the same time period that advertised a mechanical lifting device.
About 15 years ago while employed by a large engineering firm, we worked on a project to construct an in-house intermodal terminal on the grounds of the S.C. Johnson plant at Waxdale, WI. S.C. Johnson was and remains a company very much committed to protecting the environment. They saw a local intermodal terminal as a way to seriously reduce CO² emissions created by draying large quantities of loads down to intermodal terminals in Chicago. Unfortunately, they did not count on the usual railroad resistance to any ideas new or out of the ordinary. The project was quietly shelved.
Does Union Pacific have any plans to begin service in what is now a veritable intermodal wasteland?
James A. Giblin has more than 40 years’ experience in rail, truck and intermodal freight transportation, warehousing and logistics, much of it in the greater Chicago area. He has lived in the Chicago area most of his adult life and is intimately familiar with the region’s freight and passenger rail infrastructure. For six years he is proud to say, “He made his run and made his pay on the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe.” In recent years, his professional experience has expanded and diversified to include numerous public sector clients and projects in communities and municipalities across Chicago’s south suburbs. He submitted written testimony as regional rail industry expert in favor of CN/EJ&E merger to the Surface Transportation Board and testified at the STB’s September 2008 Chicago hearing in favor of transaction. Jim is a former multi-year Chair of the Education Committee of the Traffic Club of Chicago. The opinions expressed here are his own, not those of Railway Age.
