International Longshoremen’s Association, which operates on the East and Gulf Coasts. See labor unions and longshoremen.

International Longshore and Warehouse Union, which operates on the West Coast. See labor unions and longshoremen.

This is transportation shorthand for intermodal exchange. In an IMX yard, containers can be lifted from truck chassis to rail intermodal cars or vice versa.

Point of entry/exit for trucks delivering and picking up containerized cargo. Point where pickups and deposits of containers in storage area or yard are assigned.

When more than one mode of transportation is used to ship cargo from origin to destination, it is called intermodal transportation. For example, boxes of hot sauce from Louisiana are stuffed into metal boxes called containers at the factory. That container is put onto a truck chassis (or a railroad flat car) and moved to a port. There the container is lifted off the vehicle and lifted onto a ship. At the receiving port, the process is reversed. Intermodal transportation uses few laborers and speeds up the delivery time.

International Organization for Standardization. Worldwide organization formed to promote development of standards to facilitate the international carriage and exchange of goods and services. Governs construction specifications for ISO containers.