The History of Container Shipping

In the 1950s the world changed forever. On the face of it, it was an innocuous, seemingly underwhelming change. But, it was a change that has had profound economic, political and social impacts on everyone. What was this change? The invention and commercialisation of the modern shipping container…

90% of everything: the importance of shipping

Since humanity first began to engage in commerce, shipping has played an integral role in moving goods and produce from place to place. 

Opinions vary, but many histories point to the 4th century BC as being the point at which commercial shipping first emerged, when merchants realised that moving goods by sea and waterways was faster, more convenient and cost-effective than moving goods overland. 

During these ancient times, goods would be loaded onto vessels in myriad ways, ranging from sacks, boxes, and barrels to containers of varying sizes. The Ancient Greeks were noted for transporting goods at sea in sealed vases (known as amphora) - many of which continue to be found at the bottom of the Mediterranean today. 

Fast-forward to today, and shipping remains a pivotal part of global trade. In fact, estimates suggest that 90% of all goods have spent at least some time on their journey from production to consumption, at sea. 

The opening of the seas to trade has been arguably the most important factor in the development of the modern world. 

Consider that something as common-place as the Apple iPhone involves 204 suppliers spread across 43 countries in six continents. 

Seaborne trade routes are the global economy’s arteries. 

Shipping is that important.

However, what really made seaborne trade cheap, efficient and effective was the invention and commercialisation of the humble shipping container…

Early-modern containerisation

The invention of the modern container is widely attributed to the mid-1950s, but more discerning historians have pinpointed the emergence of containerisation as occurring considerably earlier. 

The early-modern period (the late eighteenth century), saw a proto form of containerisation begin to emerge on Britain’s inland waterways. 

This very early containerisation took the form of the ‘Starvationer’ - a box boat designed by James Brindley that had ten wooden containers for the transport of coal between a quarry in Worsley Delph and Manchester (think of it as a nascent form of bulk carrier). Over time, this form of boat proliferated, with the smallest designed to carry around two tons of coal, and the biggest 12 tons. 

(If you’re wondering - the boat derived its name from its exposed ribbed sides). 

It was the coal industry that continued to drive innovation in the nascent logistics industry. By the 1830s, the necessity of moving coal cargoes across the UK led to the creation of the first ‘multimodal’ containers. These took the form of simple, open wooden boxes which could be moved (via crane) from barges to railway carriages and on, in turn, to horse-drawn carriages. 

Further evolution saw these loose wooden boxes be accompanied by open iron boxes. Sweep forward to the opening days of the twentieth century and these boxes had further evolved into closed container boxes; better shielding their contents from the elements.

The formalisation of containerisation

As the twentieth century dawned, trade had gained more of an international flavour than ever before.

Deepwater, steam-powered shipping had opened trade routes between the continents and railways picked their way across vast land masses. 

Hugely different places, cultures and economies were connected like at no point in history prior. 

But, being different, each of these places had different ways of doing things; which meant, by the 1920s and 1930s efforts were being made to harmonise and standardise the way in which goods were transported across the globe. Naturally, containers offered the most straightforward and immediate area where standardisation could be affected. 

The first serious, organised effort to standardise containers was made in the UK by the Railway Clearing House (RCH) in the 1920s. In a pre-nationalisation era, it was the job of the Railway Clearing House to oversee much of the day-to-day running of the national rail network and establish common standards amongst the differing private rail operators of the period. 

Thus, the standardisation of containers fell within the RCH’s remit of establishing interoperability. 

It’s safe to assume that this standardisation helped deliver efficiencies amongst rail operators in the UK. But, it wasn’t until the 1930s that serious efforts were made to standardise containers on an international basis. 

It was with the establishment of the International Container Bureau (under the auspices of the International Chamber of Commerce) in 1933 that we can see the first concerted efforts to standardise containers for the purposes of cross-border trade. By June of 1933, the ICB had agreed on a set of obligatory parameters for container use in international trade. 

The commencement and end of the Second World War spurred further evolution of the standardised container. 1948 saw the U.S. Army Transportation Corps develop the ‘Transporter’. This was a rigid, steel container fabricated from corrugated panels. Featuring double doors at one end, mounted on skids and with lifting rings at each of the top corners, the Transporter was as close as the world had come yet to the ‘modern’ shipping container.

The Transporter proved to be exceptionally successful - especially in support of the U.S. Army’s campaign in Korea. This success led to the development of the CONEX (Container Express) system in the latter stages of 1952.

As Matthew Heins highlighted in his The Shipping Container and the Globalisation of American Infrastructure, by 1965 the U.S. military was using approximately 100,000 Conex containers. By 1967 this had risen to more than 200,000 Conex containers in operation, ‘making this the first worldwide application of intermodal containers’. 

Running parallel to the U.S. military’s efforts during this period, a pair of individuals were also helping to formalise and popularise the concept of container-based transport. Leo L. Mellam and Cecil B. Henkels were two former truckers who were hired by New York Central Railroad to develop what is considered to be the ‘first bimodal road/rail container’. 

Dubbed the Flexi-Van system, Ulrich Cramer, author of The History of the Shipping Container described the system as follows: 

“The Flexi-Van system comprised a semi-trailer with a folding kingpin, a folding fifth-wheel support and ‘sliding bogey’ as well as a turntable wagon and the ‘Flexi-Truck’ - the forerunner of today’s terminal tractors. 

The tractor (Flexi-Truck) manoeuvred the rear of the semi-trailer onto the wagon’s turntable. The next step was to release the locking pins of the ‘sliding bogeys’. The Flexi-Truck was highly manoeuvrable, with a fifth front steered wheel that could be lowered, with a fifth-wheel coupling that could be raised hydraulically. It pushed the semi-trailer body longitudinally onto the wagon. The Flexi-Truck also had a hydraulic pushrod that pushed the body from the fifth-wheel coupling onto the wagon’.

Thanks to the U.S. military and the work of individuals like Mellam and Henkels, the modern intermodal container had arrived, but it would take a singular entrepreneur to commercialise this new form of cargo transport.

The invention of modern containerisation

In popular history, the story of the modern container begins with one man; Malcolm McLean. 

Born in North Carolina in 1913, McLean finished high school in 1935 and with only enough money to buy a used truck, founded McLean Trucking with his sister Clara and brother Jim. 

The following decade and a half was a successful period for the McLean family, with McLean Trucking enjoying steady success. 

However, like those merchants of old, McLean saw how inefficient land-based transport could be and thus sought to transport his truck’s trailers via ships along the U.S. east coast from North Carolina to New York - significantly speeding up the journey time. 

It was an idea that first occurred to him in 1937, when he was delivering cotton bales from Fayetteville, North Carolina, to Hoboken, New Jersey. Due to the inefficient way in which the cargo was loaded onto vessels, McLean ended up waiting hours and hours. As he later recalled: 

“I had to wait most of the day to deliver the bales, sitting there in my truck, watching stevedores load other cargo. It struck me that I was looking at a lot of wasted time and money. I watched them take each crate off the truck and slip it into a sling, which would then lift the crate into the hold of the ship”.

Fast-forward to the early 1950s and McLean had built up a formidable trucking empire, comprising over 1,700 trucks and thirty-seven transport terminals along the U.S. eastern seaboard. 

And, it was at this point, that he returned to the idea of loading his truck’s trailers onto cargo ships.

These ships would quickly become dubbed ‘trailerships’, but, as you can imagine, loading entire trailers (wheels, chassis and all) proved to be wasteful of space.

Think of all that empty, wasted space between the trailers’ wheels and in and around the chassis. McLean certainly did! Which is why, in the early 1950s, he created what we now know to be the modern container. 

His initial design was 33 feet in length, and 8 feet wide and tall (although the length was soon increased to 35 feet). It saw his truck trailers completely redesigned into two parts; a truck bed on wheels and a separate box trailer (a.k.a. container) that could be independently disconnected from the truck bed and subsequently ‘stacked’ within or on vessels. 

McLean knew that these separate containers would have to withstand considerably different loads, pressures and conditions when at sea. As such, he ensured they were fabricated from heavy steel with a (later patented) steel-reinforced corner-post structure. This latter innovation allowed the containers to be easily ‘gripped’ by cranes and also provided the necessary strength for stacking. 

By August 1954 he had filed for a patent for his container design.

At the beginning of 1955, he decided to go ‘all in’ on his invention, selling his 75% interest in McLean Trucking for $6 million and buying Pan-Atlantic shipping (which he would go on to rename SeaLand Industries). 

The move proved to be spectacularly successful. The efficiencies generated by his standardised containers allowed McLean to offer the transport of goods at a price 25% cheaper than more traditional means.

The first of McLean’s dedicated container ships was the Ideal X which made its maiden voyage in April 1956. Its first cargo was 58 containers transported from Port Newark, New Jersey, to Houston, Texas.

It was a success, with initial inspections of the containers at Houston revealing their contents to be dry, secure and intact (in contrast to the speculations of many early detractors and critics). 

Despite this early success, McLean had numerous barriers to overcome before the widespread adoption of his novel containers. Two of the biggest challenges were; convincing port authorities to redesign their sites to better accommodate the new form of intermodal transport, and the interests of entrenched dockside unions. 

One of the biggest milestones for McLean’s innovation was the deployment of containers on the most important shipping route of the time; the North Atlantic crossing from New York to Europe. AMERICAN RACER has the honour of being the first ship to cross the Atlantic whilst carrying containers. The ship left the Chelsea piers in New York on the 18th March 1966 carrying a total of fifty 20 foot containers. AMERICAN RACER also carried a variety of break-bulk cargo below deck.

The distinction for the first all-container voyage across the Atlantic goes to FAIRFIELD, which departed Port Elizabeth in the USA on 23rd April 1966.

A short time later, containerisation hit another milestone with the beginning of the war in Vietnam. By late 1967, some 600 containers were being used to ship essential equipment and supplies to the troops in Vietnam.

Once the savings and efficiencies associated with container-based intermodal transport became apparent any barriers that had previously been in the way of containerisation soon melted away. 

Nevertheless, the widespread adoption of containerised shipping was given a significant boost by McLean’s willingness to make his patented container design available via a royalty-free lease to the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO). The ISO would go on to issue a series of ‘foundational’ container standards between 1968 and 1970.

The scaling of containerisation

Given that containerisation unleashed significant efficiency gains within port operations, it’s only natural that such an innovation should be scaled up. 

And, looking back over the history of the shipping container, that’s exactly what we can see occurred. 

According to transport experts Dr. Jean-Paul Rodrigue and Dr. Brian Slack:

‘The 6,000 TEU landmark was surpassed in 1996 with Regina Maersk, and in 2006, the Emma Maersk surpassed the 12,000 TEU landmark. By 2013, ships of more than 18,000 TEU became available, and by 2022, the market saw the introduction of 22,000 TEU ships.

A 5,000 TEU containership has operating costs per container 50% lower than a 2,500 TEU vessel. 

Moving from 4,000 TEU to 12,000 TEU reduces operating costs per container by a factor of 20%, which is very significant, considering the additional volume involved. System-wide, the outcome has been cost reductions of about 35% using containerisation’.

As you’ll see in the conclusion of this article, this development has had profound consequences - not merely for shipping, but for the global economy as a whole.

What types of containers are there? 

As with any innovation, the standard container has undergone a variety of changes since its inception. 

Today, given the vastly different types of cargo they have to transport, there is more than one ‘type’ of container in use in the shipping industry. Below, we’ve detailed some of the most common types of container now in use. 

• Dry storage containers (DV) - typically in lengths of 20, 40 and 45 feet and designed to transport dry goods (e.g. manufactured consumer goods such as electronics, clothing, homeware, furniture). It’s important to note that the dimensions of DV containers can vary depending on their length. For example, 20’ DV containers are 8’6” high. Standard 40’ DV containers are either 8’6” high - or they are what’s known as ‘High Cube’ which means they are 9’6” in height.
   
• Flat rack container (FR) - a type of container that has no top and only two sides. These containers are used when a dry cargo cannot fit inside a standard container.
   
• Open-top containers (OT) - this is effectively a dry storage container, but without a top. This type of container is used to transport tall cargoes.
   
• Open side storage containers (OS) - this type of container can be opened on either side. This is used for cargoes that would typically struggle to fit through the normal end of a container.
   
• Refrigerated containers (RF) - refrigerated containers (also known as ‘reefers’) are used to transport refrigerated cargoes such as perishable foodstuffs. They typically require an external power supply.
   
• Tanktainers (TT) - also known as tank containers, these containers are designed to carry a variety of liquids and chemicals. They are sometimes used to carry dry goods such as sugar.
   
• Half-height containers - as their name suggests, these are containers that are half the height of regular storage containers. They are normally used to carry cargo such as stones, coal etc.
   
• Special purpose containers - these are effectively ‘custom-made’ containers which are designed for the express purpose of transporting a particular cargo. Special purpose containers are rare, as many shipping companies dislike handling and transporting them.

As per the International Bureau of Containers (BIC), containers are typically classified by a series of codes (which are, in turn, governed by ISO 6346:2022). 

These standard codes are as follows:

Note - due to the varying dimensions in use, some containers are referred to using initialisms. For example, standard 20’ containers that are 8’6” high are referred to as twenty foot equivalent (TEU). Likewise, containers that are 40’ long are commonly referred to as forty-foot equivalent (FEU).

What types of container ships are there? 

Just as containers have evolved since their popular adoption in the 1950s and 1960s, container ships have changed, too. 

Of course, as we saw above, once the efficiency gains of containerisation were recognised by the shipping industry, it sought to maximise those gains through scale. 

Hence, today, there are seven major size categories for container ships (allowing the transport of the maximum number of containers via certain trade routes): 

• Small feeder. 
• Feeder. 
• Feedermax.
• Panamax.
• Post Panamax.
• New Panamax.
• Ultra Large.

Container shipping today

Today, container shipping has essentially become the de facto option for the transport of a dizzying variety of goods. 

It’s a development that has not only had a staggering impact upon the shipping industry, but the entire global economy. Consider that since the advent of standardised containerisation (as per Peter Zeihan): 

• Port turnaround time (on both ends) has shrunk from three to five weeks to less than 24 hours.
• Port costs have dwindled, from half the total cost of shipping to less than one-fifth.
• As of 2019 containerships carry approximately 50% of global trade by value, (up from functionally zero in the 1960s).

Containers have made shipping - and by extension global trade and business - significantly cheaper - to the benefit of all. It has also effectively accelerated Ricardian specialisation, opening up massive economic opportunities for emerging economies. 

Consider the following point (taken from Zeihan’s The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalisation): 

“Between 2000 and 2020, moving a container across the Atlantic or Pacific averaged out to about $700 per container. Or put another way, 11 cents per pair of shoes… One of the world’s largest container ship classes in reasonably large-scale production - the Maersk Triple-E class - pays about $1 million to transit the Suez Canal, but that duty gets split between 18,000-odd containers. That comes out to about $55 each, or less than a cent per shoe pair. 

Combined with bigger, slower ships, containerisation has reduced the total cost of transporting goods to less than 1% of said goods’ overall cost. Before industrialisation, the figure was typically more than three-quarters. Pre-deepwater (shipping), the figure was often north of 99%”.

We’re not engaging in hyperbole when we say that containerisation has completely changed the world.

Shipping container consultancy services

Containers may have transformed the way we transport goods, but they can still be subject to various issues, from the spoilage of goods to corrosion, container stack collapse and more. 

Should you find yourself dealing with a container-related issue, then speak to Brookes Bell today. With a multidisciplinary team that consists of Master Mariners, cargo scientists, metallurgists, naval architects, and fire investigators we truly are the ‘one-stop shop’ for your shipping container consultancy requirements. 

Contact Brookes Bell now for a no-obligation discussion on your container consultancy requirements

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