From the editor: On intermodal and Quantum leaps

By Pat Foran, Editor-in-Chief

In 1988, Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway operations exec Mike Haverty suggested to consultants serving the railroad's top brass that they consider partnering with truckload carriers on a premium intermodal service. The consultants shared his idea with the Santa Fe's marketing department.

“Marketing said, 'That's why Haverty is in operations,'” Haverty told me in a 2011 interview.

Haverty pressed ahead with his notion after he was named the Santa Fe's president and COO in 1989. Haverty and his intermodal team met with execs from trucking company J.B. Hunt Transport Inc. Haverty and Hunt's chairman, the inimitable J.B. Hunt, “hit it off right away,” Haverty — who later became CEO of Kansas City Southern in 1995 — told me.

In October 1989, Hunt was attending an American Trucking Associations meeting at the Chicago Hilton & Towers, which was three blocks from the Santa Fe's Michigan Avenue offices. Haverty asked Hunt if he'd stop by for a visit and take a train ride from Chicago to Kansas City. Hunt took him up on it.

“We zipped out of Corwith [Yard], which parallels I-55, and it wasn't long before we were going 70 mph,” said Haverty. “By the time we got to Galesburg [in Illinois] Hunt was sold. 'Let's do a deal,' he said. 'You want to shake on it?'” Shake on it, they did.

Santa Fe launched the service, dubbed “Quantum,” in early 1990. It was the first major U.S. venture pairing a Class I and a truckload carrier.

“Haverty and Hunt proved that trucking companies were railroads' biggest customers, and you could move across all modes,” former federal railroad administrator and intermodal advocate Gil Carmichal told Managing Editor Jeff Stagl in 2001. “Like the internet, they were combining a railroad and trucks into their own integrated systems — it's science come alive.”

Thirty-three years later, BNSF Railway Co. and J.B. Hunt Transport proved that sticking together to better serve customers' needs (and grow the business) in the interconnected freight transportation realm is alive and well. Last fall, the partners launched another premium domestic intermodal service — also named Quantum — in honor of the Hunt-Haverty handshake deal.

With this new iteration, the partners aim to provide a transit time that's a day faster than traditional intermodal offerings and a custom service designed to accommodate a shippers' specific transportation needs, as Stagl reports in this month's cover story.

The service has been gaining volume and traction in the marketplace, BNSF and J.B. Hunt execs told Stagl. The volume potential is significant: There are 7 million to 11 million loads of freight that support conversion from truck to intermodal, J.B. Hunt estimates.

“This goes back to why our companies worked together in the first place: to take highway shipments off the road and put them on the train,” J.B. Hunt's Spencer Frazier told Stagl. “We think we can leverage that Quantum brand and bring that story back to life.”

Sometimes, the biggest leaps you take are the ones you make, then stick with. Intermodal's always been a long-term play. So is earning customers' trust. Hats off to Mssrs. Haverty and Hunt, and to Santa Fe/BNSF and J.B. Hunt, for forging, nurturing and keeping their commitment — to each other, to customers and to intermodal.