Happy birthday, Container
A box conquers the world

A logistics revolution began 50 years ago. The first merchant vessel carrying containers left an American port back then. This would change the world economy. The container be boxes. 20 x 8 x 8.6 feet have become the ideal dimensions of the world economy.

It started exactly on April 26, 1956 when the modified World War II tanker”Ideal X” left the port of Newark, New Jersey heading for Houston with 58 containers on board. From that moment on,
it was not only possible to transport general cargo in a protected manner, but also at lower cost, because fewer pieces of freight had to be moved during loading and discharge.

We owe all of this to an American farmer’s son and freight forwarder, Malcolm McLean, who had the idea of the container back in the 1930s. However, it was not until he sold his freight forwarding company for 6 million US dollars that he took up this idea again. Using the proceeds from the sale, he purchased the Pan Atlantic Tanker Company, including a fleet of oil tankers. He had them modified for container transport. Through his shipping company, which he called Sea-Land, the container pioneer consistently pursued this idea further by initially shipping the transport boxes through his first scheduled services from the American East Coast to the West Coast. At the beginning this was predominantly done with freighters and tankers modified for container transport because special container ships existed only in drawings.

Standardized boxes

The container took shape in its present form very slowly. When McLean at first attempted to load truck trailers, known as road trailers, as complete units, he quickly discovered that the wheels got in the way. For this reason he soon had the first metal boxes welded together so they fit on trucks, railway cars as well as on board ships. McLean is supposed to have taken the principle of containers stowed below deck from a cigarette machine. The containers of the early period had a length of 35 feet and were used as”Sea-Land” containers even years later.

When a container ship, the”Fairland”, called at a German port (Bremen) for the first time in 1966, the size of 20 feet, established back in 1964, and later also 40 feet, had already been accepted as the global standard. Since then the ideal dimensions of 20 x 8 x 8.6 feet (12.20 m long, 2.44 m wide and 2.59 m high) have applied for containers worldwide. Astonishingly, goods were adapted to these dimensions in the course of the years. Now goods are frequently made such that they can be transported in a container without any problem.

Unstoppable

The container has also revolutionized cargo handling. Drums, boxes and sacks that had to be restowed several times at great effort on the way to the consumer for centuries cannot be found in ports any more. The metal boxes that are simply loaded and unloaded in one motion by crane characterize the scene in all ports of the world. Through the container a closed land-sea chain of transport was created – from the factory to the customer.

Another word about Malcolm McLean, who died five years ago at the age of 87. In 1969 he sold his shares in the Sea-Land shipping company for 160 million US dollars – the name Sea-Land remained part of the name of the world’s biggest shipping company, Maersk-Sealand, until 2006 – and operated a”round the world service” with a new shipping
company, USL (United States Lines). An idea that was ahead of its time back then and therefore doomed to failure.

However, the container was unstoppable in its triumphal march. In 2005 105 mil-lion TEU were transported worldwide – with an increasing trend!

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