The intermodality of a transportation consists of using as many nets (highway, railway, sea and air) and carries as possible to make time and expenses always more profitable.

The demand of service on which intermodal transport responds has the following factors: place of origin and destination, time of transfer, routes to follow, the physical and functional aspects of the goods to transfer and the quantity. The use of more means follows the goal to induce technical efficiency (determined from the relationship between service and energy resources used) and inexpensiveness (resulting from the relation between costs of the process and the increase of general value to the movement. During the last years there have become more and more companies which apply the fundamental principles and the technology of multimodal transportation. Until a few years ago the operators of the sector were directed to use mainly monomodal transport, excluding all the other more intended alternative forms, invented to improve both efficiency and efficacy of the entire process. The continuation of the hegemony of mono modal transport has reinforced a conservative and rigid mentality, which intends on one hand to the most classic solutions and on the other hand to not invest in adequate resources in the more innovated solutions (the multimodal ones). To get through this block it is necessary to give major impulse to the world of multimodal transportation which represents the only actual solution to the problem. This above all in countries like Italy where productive companies are forced to sell their final products on foreign markets because of the lack of raw materials. This all makes very clear how close the connexion between functionality and quality of the technology in the transport section and the health of the economy in a country.

Multimodal transportation makes it possible to optimise time and costs.

To show the different modalities of transport of goods one talks about combined transportation. For every movement (both persons and goods) man needs to use from an economic/technical point of view the most adapted modal carrier and it has to be the most compatible one for the environment as well. You may say that the movement from one carrier to the other has to be done with the most facility possible, to optimise the system of transportation: the standard models of transport goods (pallets, containers) are carries out at the end, which means that the transport network has to be:
ACCESIBLE
NON-STOP
INTEGRATED
HIERARCHICALLY CORRELATED
Multimodal transportation is defined efficient in the way it reduces time and expenses and effective because it makes it possible to reach goals settled in advance. Multimodal transport is extremely flexible: it uses all kinds of carriers known, which makes it easy for every one who uses it to arrive with a minimum of time and costs where he is headed at. Intermodal transport is mostly used by big companies, but also middle big and small companies have the possibility to make use of it. Besides money and time saving, intermodal transportation offers the possibility to the companies to offer an even more tended service to their own clients, to get familiar with it. Intermodal transportation is always advised, especially when the journey is particularly long, like when there is need of a transfer from port to warehouse. Alternative ways more convenient or faster than intermodal transportation do not exist.