Chicago, IL

Chicago is North America’s largest rail-intermodal crossroads, with all six Class I freight railroads operating in the region. Containers arriving from multiple directions converge in Chicago to be transferred between railroads, trucks, warehouses, and distribution centers. The Chicagoland region has roughly 20 active intermodal facilities, and nearly 17.5 million TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) of freight move through northeastern Illinois annually, making it the largest intermodal container-handling region in the Western Hemisphere.

If you look at a railroad map of the United States, everything connects to Chicago. Chicago’s dense network of rail yards also creates a concentration of both used 20ft and 40ft conex containers. Because different railroads operate separate terminals, containers are frequently transferred between rail networks or moved by truck between terminals, creating a large supporting logistics ecosystem of depots, chassis providers, trucking companies, and container yards. This combination of exceptionally high rail volume, numerous terminals, and extensive warehousing makes Chicago one of the country’s most important markets for shipping-container movement and used container availability. Because of the high container volume, Chicago usually has some of the lowest priced used 20ft, 40ft, and 40ft high cube shipping containers in the country, including coastal port cities.