Containerization
Containerization originated several centuries ago but was not well developed or widely applied until after World War II, when it dramatically reduced the costs of transport, supported the post-war boom in international trade, and was a major element in globalization.
In 1766 James Brindley designed the box boat 'Starvationer' with ten wooden containers, to transport coal from Worsley Delph (quarry) to Manchester by Bridgewater Canal.
On 17 May 1917, Louisville, Kentucky native[7] Benjamin Franklin "B. F." Fitch (1877–1956)[8] launched commercial use of "demountable bodies" in Cincinnati, Ohio, which he had designed as transferable containers.
In 1928 Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) started regular container service in the northeast U.S. After the Wall Street crash of 1929 in New York and the subsequent Great Depression, many countries were without any means to transport cargo.
[15] The development of containerization was created in Europe and the U.S. as a way to revitalize rail companies after the Wall Street crash of 1929, which had caused economic collapse and reduction in use of all modes of transport.
[24] The first major shipment of CONEXes, containing engineering supplies and spare parts, was made by rail from the Columbus General Depot in Georgia to the Port of San Francisco, then by ship to Yokohama, Japan, and then to Korea, in late 1952.
[citation needed] In 1955, former trucking company owner Malcom McLean worked with engineer Keith Tantlinger to develop the modern intermodal container.
[33] He visualized and helped to bring about a world reoriented around that insight, which required not just standardization of the metal containers themselves, but drastic changes to every aspect of cargo handling.
Several years later, as a Fruehauf executive, Tantlinger went back to McLean and convinced him to relinquish control of their design to help stimulate the container revolution.
On January 29, 1963, McLean's company SeaLand released its patent rights, so that Tantlinger's inventions could become "the basis for a standard corner fitting and twist lock".
[36] The first vessels purpose-built to carry containers had begun operation in 1926 for the regular connection of the luxury passenger train between London and Paris, the Golden Arrow/Fleche d'Or.
[39] The world's first purpose-built container vessel was Clifford J. Rodgers,[40] built in Montreal in 1955 and owned by the White Pass and Yukon Corporation.
[45] Independently of the events in Canada, McLean had the idea of using large containers that never opened in transit and that were transferable on an intermodal basis, among trucks, ships, and railroad cars.
In the US, containerization and other advances in shipping were impeded by the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), which was created in 1887 to keep railroads from using monopolist pricing and rate discrimination, but fell victim to regulatory capture.
Ever since American President Lines initiated in 1984 a dedicated double-stack container train service between Los Angeles and Chicago, transport volumes increased rapidly.
At the Port of San Francisco, the former piers used for loading and unloading were no longer required, but there was little room to build the vast holding lots needed for storing and sorting containers in transit between different transport modes.
In general, containerization caused inland ports on waterways incapable of receiving deep-draft ship traffic to decline in favor of seaports, which then built vast container terminals next to deep oceanfront harbors in lieu of the dockfront warehouses and finger piers that had formerly handled break bulk cargo.
Such work shifted to so-called "dry ports" and gigantic warehouses in rural inland towns, where land and labor were much cheaper than in oceanfront cities.
[55] Contrary to ocean shipping containers owned by the shippers, a persisting trend in the industry is for (new) units to be purchased by leasing companies.
The original choice of 8-foot (2.44 m) height for ISO containers was made in part to suit a large proportion of railway tunnels, though some had to be modified.
Drugs, antiques, weapons, undeclared merchandise, jewellery, human beings, wildlife, counterfeit products, as well as chemical, radioactive and biological materials, are illegally transported via containers.
For instance, ivory has been known to be cut into the shape of chocolate bars or painted the colour of wood to avoid detection during X-ray inspections.
[96] Additionally, containers can be physically modified to hide illegal parcels, such as through the use of fake walls, secret compartments, hollowed-out rails, support beams and doors.
[99][100] Although the programme was initiated by the United States, by 2007, some 20 countries had signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the US, leading to the implementation of CSI measures at 58 ports around the world.
The CSI system includes non-intrusive pre-screening methods, such as X-ray and radiation screening, for high-risk cargo destined for the United States.
[103] The World Shipping Council states in a survey among freight companies that this claim is grossly excessive and calculated an average of 350 containers to be lost at sea each year, or 675 if including catastrophic events.
[104] For instance, on November 30, 2006, a container washed ashore[105] on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, along with thousands of bags of its cargo of Doritos Chips.
Freight from lost containers has provided oceanographers with unexpected opportunities to track global ocean currents, notably a cargo of Friendly Floatees.
Some of the biggest battles in the container revolution were waged in Washington, D.C.. Intermodal shipping got a huge boost in the early 1970s, when carriers won permission to quote combined rail-ocean rates.
On September 5, 2008, the BBC embarked on a year-long project to study international trade and globalization by tracking a shipping container on its journey around the world.
