Everyone has seen it and wondered what is inside it, or even if there is anything inside at all. Shipping container, or just a plain container.
Shipping container was created in 1956 and changed the dockyard from the labor-intensive to capital-intensive institution virtually overnight.
Shipping container is a large box made of steel, which was originally designed to reduce the time a ship spent in port. Money was saved in port charges, as well as allows a ship to make more round-trip every year. A container ship can dock, unload and reload if necessary, all in a fraction of the time it would have taken to unload a ship in the pre-container decade.
Shipping container is 40 feet long and has many uses. We see them stacked up in freight yards and on the ships. we see them on trains and trucks, and we see them outside the factory being loaded or being used as temporary storage.
Container ships and shipping containers are developed to fasten the loading times in the dock and to reduce theft by dock workers. Before containers are introduced, thousands of individual packing cases had to be loaded by hand, that is time consuming and therefore expensive. Dock workers go on strike because they see their jobs disappearing and the endless stream of pilfered goods too.
Container ports are built to handle the new container ships, with a large gantry crane to manupulate the shipping container easily from train to yard and then from yard to the ship.
The time saving in port is only the beginning, as the shipping container is fastly transferred to a truck and on to its final destination without the risks of theft. The transit time is reduced and also can load more perishable cargoes.
There are also non-standard containers. They are all the same size outside, but some have a hook so that clothes can be transported and unloaded directly into the shop floor. There are ventilated containers for crops such as coffee and cocoa, and there are many containers with extra wide doors or lashing bars for extra load security.
Nice look at how shipping container sales have changed industry and trade forever. It’s funny to think that today’s economy seems to revolve around cell phone plans and social networking, but we completely overlook how important relatively simple inventions are to our daily lives.