As I understand, certain railroads have agreements with specific land or ocean shipping companies to haul their containers, which is why you see containers of a certain line hauled by a certain railroad.
For example: BNSF hauls J.B. Hunt and Maersk Line. UP hauls Matson, Evergreen and APL (correct me if I’m wrong on any of these). I’d like to know this info to dictate what line most of my intermodal containers would be.
Does anyone have a comprehensive list?
It’s no longer that simple for steamship (international) containers. For some time pooling arrangements between shipping lines mean you can see just about any shipping line container on any railroad. Domestic container operations are a little more parochial in their travels, though railroad-owned containers are mostly found on those roads only, e.g., EMP containers on UP, KCS, and CSX.
S. Hadid
There are basically two types of containers. Sea-going and domestic containers. Sea-going containers are 45’ or shorter and domestic containers are 48’ and larger. The domestic containers are strictly used on the mainland and are not loaded onto container ships.
The railroads contract with the shippers to move their containers all over the country. For instance UP may have the Evergreen contract this year. They will leave LA bound for Chicago. Then they transfer the train to either CSX or NS for a trip to New York. The US and Canada is used as a land bridge from the Asian countries to Europe. Of course a lot of the containers stop in the US.
Maersk is a European line that has agreements with Sealand an Asian container company. Many companies have merged and new ones have sprouted up. There are also leasing companies such as Xtra or EMP. I have attached a website that has all of the most recent reporting marks for railroad, container companies, and private companies such GATX and SHPX.
http://www.trainscan.com/data/mark/mark_n.html#E
Len
The U.S. is not used as a land bridge for containers from Asia to Europe except for a tiny number of containers that are primarily “diversions” of containers already enrouote. Containers from Asia to Europe move either via the Suez Canal or Cape of Good Hope.
Maersk purchased Sea-Land seven years ago. Sea-Land was never an Asian firm, in contrast it began as an American firm, established by trucker Malcolm McLean in 1960, sold to R. J. Reynolds Industries in 1969, and CSX in 1986. When A.P. Moller-Maersk Group purchased Sea-Land in 1999 it renamed its subsidiary Maersk Line as Maersk-Sealand.
45-foot containers are quite rare, accounting for 2% of the global fleet. Their primary marke