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Are you interested in moving intermodal freight and expanding your owner operator business? Download the free DrayNow app from the App Store or Google Play store, or click the button below.

After signing up for the free DrayNow app, trucking carriers can take as much intermodal freight as they can fit into their schedules. But just how many loads can a carrier pick in one day? Or one week?

It all depends on the mileage of the trips that you are interested in taking. The benefit of picking up intermodal loads is that these trips are local, so you can stay in a relatively small area and be able to get home every night. And while over-the-road hauls can sometimes stretch out for days depending on the distance, intermodal carriers can execute multiple shorter loads in one day.

In data collected from 4/4-4/10, the average mileage per load on the DrayNow app was 130 miles. An individual power unit could easily manage to execute two 130 mile trips per day. Less mileage per trip means that there are fewer empty miles for a carrier to drive to get back to where they started.

There are many different trip types within intermodal, and this can change the make-up of your day on the road. Crosstowns and empty repos are shorter distances and do not include any loading or unloading, so carriers are able to take a lot of these in a 24-hour period. Pickups and deliveries on the other hand generally require more mileage and time spent at warehouses, but they also pay out more. Carriers can even street turn containers to save time and have the ability to complete more intermodal loads in a day.

What could your day look like hauling intermodal freight? We have carriers in our core markets who can make an entire day out of hauling freight without leaving the metropolitan area. Los Angeles carriers who use DrayNow can find intermodal trucking trips around the Los Angeles and Inland Empire areas with only 100-200 miles of driving involved, in total. This sure beats spending the entire day or more on an over-the-road trip to a place like Phoenix, and driving around 750 miles to and from your starting point. The same goes for Chicago, where carriers can find plenty of crosstown loads on a daily basis while staying within the Chicagoland area. The freight in Atlanta is generally more regional, with plenty of intermodal loads available for carriers to fill their schedules with one to two regional hauls per day.

All in all, the amount of freight that intermodal carriers can take is dependent on the details of each trip. However, a lot of intermodal loads have low mileage and generally keeps carriers close to home, which means there is ample opportunity to pick up a lot of freight.