By Shefali Kapadia
A truck drives out of an Amazon fulfillment center in Joliet, Illinois. Another hauls an intermodal container into a nearby BNSF’s Logistics Park. And another pulls into a Lineage warehouse to pick up a refrigerated load.
It wasn’t always like this in Joliet, located in Will County to the southwest of Chicago. About three decades ago, Will County was “pretty much a sleepy” region, said Don Schaefer, president and CEO of the Mid-West Truckers Association. But thanks to the intermodal container, the county’s proximity to Chicago and an embrace of supply chain infrastructure development, Will County has become a “thriving economic hub,” Schaefer said.
What was once a quiet county outside Chicago blossomed into a massive freight epicenter. Today, Will County is home to the largest inland port in North America, three intermodal facilities, four interstates and service from five Class 1 railroads, according to the county’s Center for Economic Development. By one estimate, multimodal freight volumes in Will County are projected to reach 600 million tons valued around $1.2 trillion by 2040.
SHEFALI KAPADIA 