ISO 20/40 containers are not optimal for long haul over the road trucking -- you generally want something bigger (53') and lighter. You can rail those on their

ISO 20/40 containers are not optimal for long haul over the road trucking -- you generally want something bigger (53') and lighter. You can rail those on their own flatbeds, but that's also not optimal. Intermodal ISO containers make a lot more sense for sea and (sort of) rail; some sense for trucking, especially final delivery, but not OTR; very little sense for air freight (although I've seen a bunch of specially configured equipment shelter 20' containers shipped in cargo aircraft, it's not done for general cargo because the tare weight is in the tons when you're paying $1-20+/pound; they also don't work well with aircraft cargo handling, and can't fit as standardized ULD or loose cargo in passenger aircraft.) Repacking your cargo from one container to another sucks for a lot of reasons: cost, time, theft, damage, etc. There's also a latency and performance improvement if you can go door to door with a truck, vs. do intermodal with a train in the middle. Unless you're moving a bulk commodity to a high-volume location, it's unlikely they have rail directly to the destination. (Coal power plants do; lots of modern light industrial manufacturing sites do not.) Optimizing air vs. truck vs. rail vs. ship across your whole supply chain is an interesting problem. Another fun thing: with robo drivers, you could go essentially non-stop (except for fueling) door to door. Otherwise, you need a team driver or relay concept (usually you carry 2-3 drivers and swap them enroute; you could also do something with depots where you swap out drivers while retaining the vehicle, which I think is done for some high security convoy operations.) That makes the truck vs. rail advantage even greater.