[4] Before the advent of containerization in the 1950s, break-bulk items required manual loading, lashing, unlashing and unloading from the ship one piece at a time.

[5] Containerization has increased the efficiency of moving traditional break-bulk cargoes significantly, reducing shipping time by 84% and costs by 35%.

In 1766 James Brindley designed the box boat "Starvationer" with 10 wooden containers, to transport coal from Worsley Delph to Manchester via the Bridgewater Canal.

[9] Before the Second World War, the first container ships were used to carry the baggage of the luxury passenger train from London to Paris (Southern Railway's Golden Arrow / La Flèche d'Or).

[14] On April 26, 1956, the first of these rebuilt container vessels, Ideal X, left the Port Newark in New Jersey and a new revolution in modern shipping resulted.

[15][16] In the 1950s, a new standardized steel Intermodal container based on specifications from the United States Department of Defense began to revolutionize freight transportation.

The hull of a typical container ship is similar to an airport hangar, or a huge warehouse, which is divided into individual holding cells, using vertical guide rails.

[24] Another feature of recent hulls is a set of double-bottom tanks, which provide a second watertight shell that runs most of the length of a ship.

[32][33] Such a vessel, called Neopanamax class, is wide enough to carry 19 columns of containers, can have a total capacity of approximately 12,000 TEU and is comparable in size to a capesize bulk carrier or a Suezmax tanker.

[38] In March 2010, at Port Klang in Malaysia, a new world record was set when 734 container moves were made in a single hour.

[39] The record was achieved using 9 cranes to simultaneously load and unload MV CSCL Pusan, a ship with a capacity of 9,600 TEU.

[40] A key aspect of container ship specialization is the design of the hatches, the openings from the main deck to the cargo holds.

[42] Today, some hatch covers can be solid metal plates that are lifted on and off the ship by cranes, while others are articulated mechanisms that are opened and closed using powerful hydraulic rams.

[46] The effectiveness of lashings is increased by securing containers to each other, either by simple metal forms (such as stacking cones) or more complicated devices such as twist-lock stackers.

Some smaller container ships working in European ports and rivers have liftable wheelhouses, which can be lowered to pass under low bridges.

As of 2006[update], the United States Bureau of Transportation Statistics count 2,837 container ships of 10,000 long tons deadweight (DWT) or greater worldwide.

[62] Seven other flag states had more than 100 registered container ships: Liberia (415), Germany (248), Singapore (177), Cyprus (139), the Marshall Islands (118) and the United Kingdom (104).

[70] Scrapping rates are volatile, the price per light ton displacement has swung from a high of $650 per LTD in mid-2008 to $200 per LTD in early 2009, before building to $400 per LTD in March 2010.

Furthermore, the permissible maximum ship dimensions in some of the world's main waterways could present an upper limit in terms of vessel growth.

In 2011, Maersk announced plans to build a new "Triple E" family of container ships with a capacity of 18,000 TEU, with an emphasis on lower fuel consumption.

Samsung Heavy Industries was expected to deliver several ships of over 20,000 TEUs in 2017, and has orders for at least ten vessels in that size range for OOCL and MOL.

ONE Innovation is one of six new Megamax vessels ordered by Ocean Network Express in December 2020 to be built by a consortium of Imabari Shipbuilding and Japan Marine United.

[60] It is limited to charters of 3 months or more, and presented as the average daily cost in U.S. dollars for a one-TEU slot with a weight of 14 tonnes.

The most resilient sized vessel in this time period were those from 200 to 300 TEU, a fact that the United Nations Council on Trade and Development attributes to lack of competition in this sector.

[60] As of 2011, the index shows signs of recovery for container shipping, and combined with increases in global capacity, indicates a positive outlook for the sector in the near future.

Freight rates are expressed as the total price in U.S. dollars for a shipper to transport one TEU worth of cargo along a given route.

For example, in early 2009, some container lines dropped their freight rates to zero on the Asia-Europe route, charging shippers only a surcharge to cover operating costs.

[111] Carriers remain operationally independent, as they are forbidden by antitrust regulators in multiple jurisdictions from colluding on freight rates or capacity.

In July 2016 the European Commission reported that it had raised concerns with 14 container shipping carriers regarding their practice of announcing General Rate Increases (GRIs) in a coordinated manner, which potentially conflicted with the EU and EEA rules on concerted practices which could distort competition (Article 101 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union).

[115] That year, seven of the busiest ten container ports were in the People's Republic of China, with Shanghai in 1st place, Ningbo 3rd, Shenzhen 4th, Guangzhou 5th, Qingdao 7th, Hong Kong 8th and Tianjin 9th.