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HOUSTON — Chassis users can expect higher rates, better quality equipment and no short-term resolution to the intermodal industry’s equipment challenges, top executives of the three largest chassis leasing companies said.

Four-year-old intermodal equipment safety rules that were supposed to make chassis safer have failed to accomplish that goal because the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration isn’t enforcing the law, according to trucking officials.

Intermodal truckers could face a new operational threat after a recent warning from port labor and management to leasing companies, the primary owners of chassis, that union workers must continue to fix and repair the equipment.

Intermodal truckers, who have been fighting since 1997 to improve chassis maintenance, say that goal remains elusive today, four years after the rule meant to address the problem went into effect.

Drayage fleets have won regulatory approval to set up the first trucker-owned chassis pool for highway moves of intermodal cargo at a time when ocean carriers are moving away from their role of providing that equipment.

The gradual shift of intermodal equipment control from ocean carriers to truckers advanced last week as an industry group formally created a chassis cooperative and drayage carrier, IMC Companies, purchased 1,520 units for use in an existing pool.

The failure of Congress to pass legislation to provide funding to improve and expand the nation’s highway system has left many roads covered with cracks, potholes and uneven pavement, which are creating additional challenges for some vehicle suspension makers, according to company officials.

The ongoing shift of intermodal chassis ownership from ocean carriers to truckers and lessors could encounter a new jolt as the International Longshoremen’s Association promised to keep the repairing of chassis a key negotiating issue in contract talks that begin next week.

Two new chassis pool options are emerging for drayage carriers that have been struggling with equipment issues since ocean lines began in 2009 to back away from providing chassis free-of-charge for moving international containers.

Two years after truckers won a decade-long battle to win new federally mandated chassis-safety rules, broad disagreement about the effect of those changes remains, marketplace confusion reigns and operational issues are unresolved, according to trucking officials and consultants.