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History of the Shipping ContainerHow containers changed the world!Before the container came into widespread use, shipping freight was extremely expensive. As a result, manufacturers endured high-cost, cramped urban plants in order to be near their customers and their suppliers. The world was full of small manufacturers selling locally – it was cost prohibitive to ship many things across the country, let alone halfway around the world. Goods were shipped “break-bulk”; that is, in individual sacks, barrels, and crates, each individually loaded and unloaded by armies of workmen. This was very costly in terms of the time and labour involved, before even taking into account all that was lost or stolen along the way. The shipping container, and the dockside cranes that came with it, eliminated this altogether. It brought about a highly automated process that reduced the cost to ship freight dramatically. As the container became intermodal, it was easily transferred from boat to train to truck in a seamless process, without the need for unloading and reloading. As containerization evolved, developing countries with struggling economies could realistically endeavour to become suppliers to wealthier nations. Small coastal towns with their cheap land could become major ports, which were no longer limited to major cities. Containerization was increasing global trade, and with it, competition. Competition brought prices down such that average-income households could obtain things that had once been out of their reach. As a result, the container helped boost living standards across the world. Of course, this revolution did not happen overnight. It took many years and a major war for containers to become standardized and be used almost exclusively for shipping around the world. As with many other innovations, the economic benefits arose not from the container itself, but from the entrepreneur who discovered how to put it to practical use. This was Malcolm McLean, a ceaselessly driven individual with the vision that railroads, trucks, and ship lines were all in the same business: moving freight. It really took the war in Vietnam for the benefits of the container to become globally apparent. At the beginning of the war, shipping supplies to Vietnam was highly disorganized. Everything arrived in small ships full of break-bulk cargo, which was slow and inefficient, not to mention vulnerable to theft. Malcolm McLean, who had been using containers for the past decade, became aware of this, and decided that containerization was the answer to this logistical mess. Although he encountered a lot of bureaucratic resistance, he persisted, and his company, Sea Land Services, took over shipping supplies for the war effort, which included building a major port to handle container shipments. He took a big risk, but his success was great. In fact, his success was so great that it convinced the entire US military to switch to container shipping. McLean also had the genius to make a deal with ports in Japan so that he could move freight back to North America rather than carry empty containers back from Vietnam. Thanks to this shrewd businessman, the shipping industry is what it is today. And thanks to computers, it is even more of an organized system. Computers orchestrate this process by instructing the crane operators exactly which container to unload from the ship, and place on which vehicle, and vice versa. These reciprocal actions result in the simultaneous unloading and loading of the ship. Today, these containers are manufactured in Asia, and are shipped over to North America full of consumer goods. Since there are more filled containers coming in this direction rather than the reverse, a surplus of containers can be found in North America. Consequently, we are able to use these containers for a myriad of other applications!
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