While most people don’t know it, intermodal freight shipping has been around for quite some time, dating back to the 1780s in England. The method of moving a loaded container from one vehicle to another without actually handling the cargo itself has grown from ships and rail to include trucks and barges as technology has evolved. The use of standardized containers, or ISO containers, has allowed shipping across countries and nations to flourish, thanks to the time and money saved by crossing land bridges.
Land bridge is a reference to an intermodal freight shipment that begins on a ship and then crosses a body of land for a significant portion of the journey en route to its final destination. The land portion of the journey is known as the land bridge, and rail is often the method of transportation during the crossing. Of course, there are different types of bridges: standard bridges, mini-bridges, and micro-bridges.
land bridge
A standard bridge is when an intermodal container shipped by ocean vessel from point A to point B crosses an entire country before reaching its final destination. For example, a container being shipped from Japan to England is loaded onto a ship in Japan that then docks in Los Angeles, where the container is transferred to a train and taken to New York, where it is loaded onto another ship and completes its journey. Travel to England.
mini-bridge
A mini bridge is when a container is similar to a standard land bridge with one minor change. Whereas a standard bridge involves the container beginning and ending its journey on one ship, only crossing a country in an effort to reach another ship, a mini-bridge takes the second ship out of the equation. Using our example above, a mini land bridge would be if the final destination of the containers was New York instead of England.
microbridge
A microbridge is close in definition to a miniland bridge, except that, still using our example above, while a minibridge would stretch to New York, a microbridge would have the container end up somewhere like Chicago or Denver, a destination inner land.
global shipping
Thanks to intermodal shipping and land bridges, transporting goods that would previously have had to make long detours to avoid land masses is now possible via the most direct route. This allows companies to save time and money that they can then pass on to their customers.
