Intermodal freight transport involves the transportation of freight in a container or vehicle, using multiple modes of transportation i.e. rail, ship, and truck, without any handling of the freight itself when changing modes. The method reduces cargo handling, and so improves security, may reduce damages and loss, and may allow freight to be transported faster. Reduced cost versus over the road trucking is the key benefit for intracontinental use. It enables a load to be handled as a single unit when it is transferred between road, rail, and sea modes of transport; e.g., the container can be unloaded from a cargo ship and loaded onto a truck as a single unit. It is not as common to use intermodal containers for airfreight transport because of aircraft shape and weight restrictions.

The standards outside dimensions of intermodal containers are: 20 or 40 foot in length; 8 foot in width; and 8, 8.5, or 9.5 foot in height; less 8 inches of length, 5 inches of width, and 9.5 inches of height to determine the inside dimensions. Typical sea transport costs per 40-foot container are: $3000-4000 from Japan to the US west coast, $4000-5000 from Singapore to the US west coast, and $2500-3500 from Europe to the US east coast; transport costs for a 20-foot container is 70% of the costs of a 40-foot container.