What is meant by the term intermodal in trucking?

The "containers" are loaded with a toplift onto a railcar. Some rail cars are older and can only accommodate 1 container. Newer ones are shaped like a box and can hold two containers on top of each other. I'm sure you have seen them while waiting for a train at a railroad track. Once unloaded from the train it is loaded onto a gtrailer called a "chassis". It's like a skeleton of a trailer. Pins hold the container on the chassis. If you have the seen "Fast and the Furious" you will rememb er the opening scene with the trailer full of electronics. There's a big machine that somewhat looks like a forklift and a crane. It lowers it onto the "chassis". What you didn't see is the driver locking the pins in the 4 corners. Rolling along in the background is a smaller machine with a wide boom. That's a toplift. I think, however, that scene took place at a dock. Ships with hundreds of containers comes to the dock...gets unloaded and stacked on the ground...eventually loaded onto chassis to go ...  more