The 50th Anniversary of the Birth of the Box

April 27, 2006

Sarah Murray looks at how the container has transformed the global economy

Fifty years ago, Malcom McLean, a North Carolina truck driver, launched a vessel that was to change the world. On board were 58 steel boxes. It was the start of something big. Today shipping containers bring us almost everything we eat, wear and touch. Without them, globalisation would not have been possible, argues Sarah Murray

This April, hundreds of people gathered for a grand gala event at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum in Washington. They were there to celebrate the anniversary of a rather unusual object – a large steel box. It might seem a strange thing to be toasting, but the shipping container is one of the most crucial cogs in the global transport system and is well worth raising a glass to on this, its fiftieth birthday.

It is hard to believe an object that has so radically transformed the global economy was born so recently. But despite its 1950s launch, the container did not take off for another couple of decades.

When it did, the revolution came with a dreary name – it was called intermodalism. But while the technical jargon associated with containerization might not sound thrilling, the system was an astoundingly efficient one in which uniformly sized containers could be shifted seamlessly from vessels to trucks and trains.

The man behind this revolution was a North Carolina truck driver born in 1913. Sitting on the docks one day, Malcom McLean watched cotton bales being loaded on to a vessel in New Jersey and decided it would be far easier simply to lift up the entire trailer and put it on board.

McLean’s simple idea was to end break-bulk shipping, in which cargo had to be separately loaded, packed and unloaded. The old system employed thousands of workers deploying primitive equipment, such as hooks and nets, and sheer brute force. It was a process that had changed little in centuries – until the birth of the container.

Eventually, containerization was to cut drastically shipping costs and speed up delivery times. In doing so, the container was one of the most important tools in the globalisation of trade and manufacturing.

The concept took a long time to catch on, however. Ports operators and ship owners were reluctant to invest the money in new equipment, vessels and port infrastructure. As significant was the resistance on the docks, where the unions feared massive job losses. They were right to be worried. In a 1986, the International Longshoremen’s Union told that New York Times that, in New York Harbour, its membership had plummeted from more than 30,000 in 1960 to just 8,500.

The port of Hamburg today illustrated just how dramatic the change has been. The place is void of workers. When the ships arrive, robot-like gantries move into action, operated remotely from a control office in an air-conditioned cabin overlooking the vast container yard.

As with so much industrial innovation, it was the military that helped promote the container when the US turned to the box to transport supplies and equipment necessary to prosecute its war in Vietnam.
And in the end, the sheer commercial logic of the container’s efficiency could not be resisted. Through the 1970s and 80s, port operators and vessel owners set about transforming their infrastructure. Vast gantry cranes were erected on the docks. Large quays and terminals that could hold thousands of containers were located in the suburbs, replacing the old piers found in town centres.

Vessels became different creatures altogether. Instead of relying on the hold for storage, these low-slung craft also use their decks, turning them into gigantic flat trays on which to stack boxes. Built by the Mediterranean Shipping Company, one of the biggest is the MSC Texas, about the length of three football pitches and able to carry 8,400 containers.

Containerziation also transformed manufacturing practices. With shipping costs an ever-shrinking percentage of the value of the goods carried, geographic location of production centres became less important. Instead, companies focused on the wage levels of the workers making their goods. Gradually, the manufacture of everything from apparel and footwear to computers and mobile phones moved to factories in countries such as China, India and Indonesia, where labour costs were a fraction of those in the developed world.

But while the internet is drastically improving efficiency in the shipping industry, the freight handling business remains a remarkably low-tech phenomenon. This is unlikely to change. And while the web may have transformed the operations of global companies – allowing them to create vast customer bases and complex supply chains – delivering the goods still depends on the smooth passage of an unassuming metal box.

Sarah Murray is currently writing a book, “Moveable Feasts: the Incredible Journeys of the Things We Eat”, in which there will be a chapter on the story of the shipping container. She can be reached on sarah.e.murray@gmail.com