Malcom Purcell McLean (November 14, 1913 – May 25, 2001)[1] was an American businessman who invented the modern intermodal shipping container, which revolutionized transport and international trade in the second half of the twentieth century.
[3] In 1935, when he finished high school at Winston-Salem, his family did not have enough money to send him to college, but there was enough for McLean to buy a used truck.
By 1952, he was developing plans to carry his company's trucks on ships along the U.S. Atlantic coast, from North Carolina to New York.
[7] It soon became apparent that "trailerships", as they were called, would be inefficient because of the large waste in potential cargo space on board the vessel, known as broken stowage.
McLean secured a bank loan for $22 million and, in January 1956, bought two World War II T-2 tankers, which he converted to carry containers on and under deck.
On April 26, 1956, with 100 invited dignitaries on hand, one of the converted tankers, the SS Ideal-X (informally dubbed the "SS Maxton" after McLean's hometown in North Carolina), was loaded and sailed from the Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal, New Jersey, for the Port of Houston, Texas, carrying 58 35-foot (11 m) Trailer Vans,[8] later called containers, along with a regular load of liquid tank cargo.
As the Ideal-X left the Port of Newark, Freddy Fields, a top official of the International Longshoremen's Association, was asked what he thought of the newly fitted container ship.
[10] In April 1957, the first container ship, the Gateway City, began regular service between New York, Florida, and Texas.
During the summer of 1958 McLean Industries, still using the name Pan-Atlantic Steamship Corporation, inaugurated container service between the U.S. mainland and San Juan, Puerto Rico with the vessel Fairland.
[citation needed] To achieve reductions in labor and dock servicing time, McLean followed Roy Fruehauf's lead and became vigilant about standardization.
[citation needed] By the end of the 1960s, Sea-Land Industries had 27,000 trailer-type containers, manufactured by Fruehauf, 36 trailer ships and access to over 30 port cities.
By the end of 1974, Reynolds had put more than $1 billion into Sea-Land, building huge terminals in New Jersey and Hong Kong and adding to its fleet of container ships.
[citation needed] Sea-Land's biggest expense was fuel, so in 1970, RJR bought the American Independent Oil Co., better known as Aminoil, for $56 million.
[citation needed] The former Sea-Land's domestic services was operated until 2015 as Horizon Lines, which accounted for approximately 36% of the total U.S. marine container shipments between the continental U.S. and the markets of Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico, and to Guam.
[citation needed] In 1991, at 78, McLean founded Trailer Bridge, Inc., which operates between the US mainland (Jacksonville, Florida), Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.
[2] His death prompted Norman Y. Mineta to make the following statement: Malcom revolutionized the maritime industry in the 20th century.
His idea for modernizing the loading and unloading of ships, which was previously conducted in much the same way the ancient Phoenicians did 3,000 years ago, has resulted in much safer and less-expensive transport of goods, faster delivery, and better service.
[19]In an editorial shortly after his death, Baltimore Sun stated that "he ranks next to Robert Fulton as the greatest revolutionary in the history of maritime trade.
[citation needed] McLean is the only person to found three companies that were later listed on the New York Stock Exchange (plus two others on the NASDAQ).
The annual McLean Award recognizes an outstanding graduating student at George Mason University, selected by professors.