Analysis: how a simple corrugated box made it possible for us to access global products in a timely, secure and cost-effective manner
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You may have passed them on the road, seen them in a movie or even used one as a changing room for a sports club, but have you ever thought about the importance of the shipping container? This simple corrugated box has made it possible for consumers to access global products in a timely, secure and cost-effective manner. So how did the container become so prevalent in international trade?
The use of the container in its current design can be traced to Malcolm McLean. He was the owner of a trucking business based in North Carolina in the United States. In 1937, McLean transported 40 cotton bales from North Carolina to the port in Hoboken, New Jersey but, when he arrived, he was told he had to wait as other trucks were ahead of him.
This was at a time when ships commonly spent more time in port, as opposed to out in the sea, because the loading and unloading process was largely dependent on manual labour. Dockers were expected to take loads from trucks, place them in slings which would then position them on the ship, where again manual labour would take the loads out of the slings and secure them on the ship. This process was also necessary for the off-loading operations.
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McLean had to wait for nearly a day to unload his bales. As he did so, he watched the dock workers and grew increasingly frustrated as to how long this process took. He recounted later that this was the day where he envisaged the lifting of trailers directly onto the ship to reduce wasted time and money.
But it would take until 1956 before his vision came to fruition. McLean never forgot about his idea of lifting trailers on and off the ship and a solution was found with the help of engineer and trailer manufacturer Keith W. Tantlinger. While companies had used boxes and crates of various sizes and materials before this, the container as we know it today had a major development.
In the newly designed container, three oval holes were located in each corner where an external device called a twist lock could be slipped in and out, depending on whether you wished to move or secure the container in place. This twist lock was the foundation for the quick transfer of the container from trucks to ships and vice versa and consists of an oval block which can fit into the oval holes in the container itself. Once the block is inserted, it is twisted so that the oval block can no longer pass through the oval hole. This means the container is now locked in place and the container should not shift during transit, whether that be a trailer, crane or ship.
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The versatility of the design meant that trailers and cranes could be constructed with twist locks in place making them a secure means of transport. In terms of the ship design, twist locks could be attached to the floor of the vessel to allow containers to be fastened on board during transit. Likewise, they could be designed to secure adjacent containers together to keep them steady throughout the journey and reduce the possibility of falling overboard. The system is not completely failsafe, as the World Shipping Council estimate that 661 containers were lost at sea in 2022.
The first sailing of containers took place in April 1956 on the SS Ideal-X, a former World War II tanker that was converted to take containers. It set sail from the Port of Newark, New Jersey for the Port of Houston, Texas with 58 containers, all of which were 33 feet in length. It was deemed such a success that an official from the dockers union was heard to say that he would like to sink it.
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The mechanical lifting on and off led to a much-reduced reliance on manual labour: it cost $5.86 per ton to load a ship prior to containerisation, but this was subsequently reduced to 16 cents. Additionally, the container ensured that the goods were secure from breakages and thefts. For example, producers of whiskey in Scotland expected to lose or break 33% of the cargo during pre-containerised transit to the US, but no losses were experienced in the first containerised shipment in 1966.
As the attraction for containerisation grew, so did the competition. One of the outcomes of this competition was different companies used different size containers. They were generally the width, as this was dictated by the width of trucks available. However, the length was a different matter. In The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger, Marc Levinson found that shipping companies in Latin America used 17-foot containers due to the road network available whereas a competitor on the US west coast, Matson, used 24-foot lengths as their principal client shipped canned pineapple and there was no need to go any longer as it would be too heavy to lift. This lack of standardisation meant the possibilities of efficiencies in ports and transport operations could not be realised.
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In 1972, the International Standards Organisation (ISO) stepped in and created the standards we still use today. Tantlinger and McLean allowed use of the twist lock patent to help aid this standardisation. The modern shipping container is available in a multitude of sizes and configurations, but the standard ISO container is taken as being either 20 or 40 ft in length, closed on all sides with two rear doors, 8 foot in width and 8ft 6 inches in height or 9ft 6 inches if a 'high cube'. The use of the 20- and 40-foot size container is so popular that they constitute 94% of all the containers used globally. Other options include refrigerated, open-top, open-side, flat, tunnel or tanks as well as 45-foot containers for intra-European shipping.
Vessel sizes have increased dramatically since the inaugural sailing of the Ideal-X. The TEU (Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit) is the term used to measure the capacity of a vessel and represents how many 20-foot containers can fit on the vessel. Modern vessels such as the MSC Loreto can carry in excess of 24,000 TEU. Due to the nature of Irish ports and the size of the Irish market, we rely heavily on the services of feeder vessels. These are vessels up to around 1,000 TEU, which operate between large European ports such as Rotterdam, that can handle the 24,000 TEU vessels, with Irish ports such as Dublin, Waterford and Cork.
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It's estimated that 5,589 container ships moved 1,687 million tonnes of cargo in 2022. According to the CSO. 8.5 million of this was either destined or exported from Ireland, with Irish ports handling just over 1.1 million TEU. The World Economic Forum determined that $14 trillion worth of goods were shipped in a container at some point between manufacturer and consumer in 2022, with the value of an average 40-foot container shipped in 2020 calculated to be at just under $109,000. Indications are that global trade will continue to rely heavily on the container.
Whilst the shipping container is often ignored or overlooked by the public, it has proven itself instrumental and transformative in international trade. It standardises the requirements for handling resulting in an ability to be used seamlessly across all modes of transport and is the key to a feasible and sustainable multi-modal freight transport system. It is functional, adaptable and reliable - and will be a sight on Irish roads and in ports for many years to come.
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The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
