Tuesday, December 28, 2021
From 0 to 100 million
How containers conquered the world
By Bastian Hosan
When the first freighters with colorful, high-stacked steel boxes set off over 40 years ago, hardly anyone took this type of transport seriously. Today it is impossible to imagine world trade without containers. Hardly anyone can still imagine how it went without it.
When the first container-laden ships moored in Germany in 1966, it was a revolution – albeit one that hardly anyone took seriously at first. In retrospect, there is hardly a development that has changed global trade as much as these standardized steel boxes.
But how did the trade work before that? Before seafarers and shipowners started to store their goods in these safe boxes in order to sail them across the oceans, hosts of shudderers toiled in the ports of the world, who individually on board everything that was to be stowed in the storage rooms of ships had to heave. They could at least load heavy objects with the help of winches.
It was a tedious job. But also one that brought many people into wages and bread. No wonder that not a few viewed the new steel boxes with skepticism, fear or even anger. With a ship that held 5000 tons of cargo, 60 more men were employed for a week.
That changed when the US shipowner and haulier Malcom McLean loaded the first 58 steel boxes onto a freighter on April 26, 1956. The Ideal X was a converted US Navy tanker that he had purchased; it was the first of his container ships. It started from the port in Newark, New Jersey, heading for Houston, Texas.
Instead of muscles, brains are required today
Twelve years later, in 1968, the first ship to be loaded exclusively with containers called at the port of Hamburg. At that time, it was not yet prepared for such steel colossi. Before the “American Lancer” could dock, she had to wait ten meters from the quay wall until there was enough water under the keel with the tide. The fear of many Hamburgers at the time: the port could move out of the city and the ships could be unloaded on the North Sea coast.
Are you interested in economics and history? Then you can here continue browsing.
A glance at the ports today shows that the fear of the showers of becoming superfluous has not been confirmed. Few workers had to be laid off, instead they were retrained. With the new container technology, brains are now required where muscle power was previously needed. The ports have become modern high-tech terminals in which today ships loaded with thousands of containers can be loaded and unloaded within hours.
In the early days of the container, it was initially assumed that only 60 percent of all goods could be transported in these boxes. Soon you knew better. Today almost everything is packed in containers, technology makes it possible: Containers are relatively easy to stack on ships or in ports, they save space and, moreover, the transport is much safer than that on the old general cargo carriers that used to sail the oceans .
Today more than 100 million containers are in transit around the world at any time. Not only on ships, but also on trains, trucks and airplanes. The steel box is everywhere – each has a number with which it can be located all over the world and its path from A to B can be precisely traced. The container, which many initially did not want in the port, has conquered the whole world within half a century.
Container shipping today in numbers:
- 25 million containers are in transit on the world’s oceans at any given time.
- Container ships currently wait an average of 12.8 days off Los Angeles for their cargo to be unloaded. In April it was eight days.
- Shipping goods in a 40-foot shipping container from China to the US west coast cost $ 17,377 in November, according to Freightos.com. The price has increased tenfold compared to before the pandemic.
The article first appeared at Capital +. Updated on 12/7/21.