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[quote user="arbfbe"]One huge advantage to the railroad is that stacks offer a huge space savings over piggyback.  A 150 unit piggyback train takes up 150 x 53' of space.  Even more actually allowing for the articulation, trucks and couplers needed to make it move.  On the other hand, 150 units of double stack only takes 75x53' of space plus the articulation, trucks and couplers.  Now that is a massive savings in investment in more yard capacity, siding capacity and teminal capacity when intermodal traffic is increasing.[/quote] I'm not sure it's wise for the railroads to treat the intermodal customers like they do the coal and grain customers when it comes to load factor vs service flexibility.  Usually if given a choice, the domestic shipper will want to use the box with the most capacity and the greatest flexibility, and that means dry vans, not containers.  So what if a railroad can fit 250 domestic containers in the same space as 125 trailers - just because it fits the railroad's internal goals doesn't mean it's what's best for the supply chain.  Railroads have lost sight of the one thing everyone wants to accomplish - taking long haul trailers off the roads.  TOFC can accomplish this without forcing the road mode folks to change it's equipment specs.  Domestic COFC on the other hand has forced the road folks to buy/lease extra equipment that has less relative efficiency. It would be interesting to see what percentage of domestic intermodal boxes (containers and trailers) spend on the rails and what percentage is spent on roads.  Unless these boxes spend most of their time on the rails, I can't see where domestic containers would be an asset to the supply chain rather than a detriment.
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