Q&A: Anne Reinke, President & CEO of the Intermodal Association of North America

Logistics Management Group News Editor Jeff Berman recently interviewed Anne Reinke, President & CEO of the Intermodal Association of North America (IANA). Reinke joined IANA late last year and for the previous four years, she served as President & CEO of the Transportation Intermediaries Association (TIA). And prior to that, she spent two years as Deputy Assistant Secretary with the U.S. Department of Transportation and 16 years with CSX Corporation. Reinke provided Berman with an overview of her views on the intermodal market, the freight economy, tariffs, and a 2025 outlook. Their conversation follows below. 

Logistics Management (LM): How do you view the current state of the freight economy?

Anne Reinke: I will address the intermodal part of that first. Intermodal volumes ended 2024 up annually, although it was pretty flat generally. But the reason we ended the year so well was there was a lot of pre-positioning of goods coming to the West Coast to avoid any kind of East and Gulf Coast port strike [which was a possibility heading into the year]. That said, I think there's still cautious optimism, because retail sales are still good, the American consumer is still spending, and some inflationary pressures appear to be diminishing, with optimism regarding that. And unemployment remains low. Overall, I think the economy seems good. But as we know, the freight economy has been pretty fair-to- middling for a long time now, since 2023, so, two years really. Will that go up? One hopes. But I don't think we have any kind of indicators that says it says it will—other than our cautious optimism.

LM: As truckload capacity seems to be tightening, which is good for motor carriers, what, in your opinion, does that mean for intermodal, given that the modes are partners and sometimes competitors, too?

Reinke: Indeed, we are partners and competitors. It's funny because it's kind of like the tale of two cities, in that if truck capacity tightens, it does give more opportunities for intermodal, because then you just want to make sure you have an opportunity to get your goods to where they need to go. On the other hand, it does make it more attractive for some long-haul drivers to go on what would typically be called an intermodal route, because now you're getting compensated slightly higher. And, so, what we found is, again, that tale of two cities, that when there was excess capacity, they would turn to intermodal because it was just not cost effective for a driver to handle that route. And now that's kind of a little bit reversed. Overall, I think the tightening capacity means that more people and more people are buying, and there's more volume, So I think that brings benefits across the board.

LM: Addressing tariffs, in what ways do the implementation of tariffs most impact, or affect, intermodal?

Reinke: From a very high level, I think our members are trying to figure out exactly what this means to them. What my concern would be and what I think what our members’ concerns would be is, does this undermine things like cautious optimism, increasing volumes, and tightening capacity. The concern is that, do we have less container traffic moving? Anything that affects container traffic, that makes it go down, that would be the concern that we have. We need to figure out exactly what that means for our trading partners and for our membership. And the other piece, of course, with China, is that most of those containers are built in China. So, what does that do with the underlying cost of containers? Now, we don't represent the container manufacturer, but obviously there's a downstream cost to us.

LM: When you talk to intermodal stakeholders, what are the things that are most pressing for them?

Reinke: One big thing is what may happen to the independent contractor model. As we know, California is standing out, kind of ahead of the curve around this issue, although I hear it's not being enforced. I don't know the extent of what it's practically doing to the industry, other than there's folks who just don't want to work there anymore. But the regulatory side of it, as you know, the Trump administration did the two-part test, the Biden administration then said, ‘No, we don't want a two-part test. We want a six-part test.” I think the state of play means it's very challenging to know if you can have independent contractors with any kind of legal certainty, and the freight market does not like uncertainty. No marketplace likes uncertainty. We have a new Department of Labor nominee. She was a supporter of the PRO act. Is she going to continue to be in that vein? I think that's something that we're very, very concerned about. And the government should not be the one telling us how to live our lives and how to run our businesses, so, I think, fundamentally, that still concerns us. The other stuff we saw like the in-use locomotive rule from CARB, with the waiver withdrawn, is a good thing. I think they live to fight another day. They'll probably bring it back if a Democrat wins in the next administration. The other issue is what happens with broker transparency, which is an issue TIA obviously cares about most. We wrote a letter to the FMCSA and said, fundamentally, does a safety agency have any authority to determine commercial terms between contracting parties? We would say, no. I mean, fundamentally, that's what we can be concerned about. Again, we know there's a regulatory freeze. So, will it be unfrozen? Who really knows?

LM: How do you view AI utilization within intermodal?

Reinke: How we think about it is how it can help our industry, in terms of, for example, when a driver is pulling into a facility and knowing exactly what to expect about the container to pick up, and where the chassis is and all that stuff. So, how can we assist in that and how can automated systems help with that? We have this Uniform Intermodal Interchange & Facilities Access Agreement and much of that is done with people who are answering the phone because the motor carrier comes to the facility and doesn't know exactly what's going on, and so they call us. We're not the ones that can necessarily tell you where the container is, which is certainly helpful. But I think that knowing that we have drivers who need things and regarding how can we be part of the solution, I would say, yes, AI is something we think about. I would just say one other thing related to AI is that we've just established a cargo theft working group. Cargo theft leads us all to think about how can we improve visibility through technology, and what does AI mean to that? And so, not only just determining best practices in terms of prevention, and also, then, how we can get it adjudicated, because we don't necessarily see a whole lot of that…but how can we think about technology in that in that cargo theft space. Stay tuned on that.

LM: Shifting back to intermodal volumes, how well do you think the intermodal sector was prepared for an East and Gulf Coast port dockworkers strike, had that come to fruition?

Reinke: I think we were feeling OK because of the shift to the West Coast and that container traffic would continue to move. But I don't know how long that would last. I do believe, had there been a strike, there would have been real dysfunction in the supply chain. And we all know what that looks like. That's a problem. Now, my understanding is the traffic is shifting back East again, so I think we're doing fine, but that was a genuine concern for us.

LM: What are your expectations for intermodal volumes in 2025? To end 2024, there were a lot of moving parts, with things like front-loading, the potential strike, Peak Season, and getting ready for more tariffs.

Reinke: Import levels, especially over the second half of 2024, were very strong. That sort of makes me feel like 2025 could be more moderate. We put these stresses on the supply chain to end 2024, and that, to me, means we may not see these huge volume numbers in 2025. I don’t think it will be negative, but I don’t think it is going to be a material upswing in volumes. We were so used to these stunning volume levels being “normal,” with levels below that seeming like a crisis of some sort, whereas it is really probably just moderate growth.