Egypt ferried wood, fabrics and glass to Arabia in sacks via camel-driven caravans. And hundreds of years later, the Greeks used ancient storage containers known as amphorae to transport wine, olive oil and grain on triremes that plied the Mediterranean and neighboring seas to other ports in the region. Even as trade grew more advanced, the process of loading and unloading as goods were transferred from one method of transportation to another remained very labor-intensive, time-consuming and costly , in part because containers came in all shapes and sizes.
Containers from a ship being transferred onto a smaller rail car, for example, often had to be opened up and repacked into a boxcar. Different-sized packages also meant space on a ship could not be effectively utilized, and also created weight and balance challenges for a vessel.
And goods were more likely to experience damage from handling or theft due to exposure. The U. But it was not until the s that American entrepreneur Malcolm McLean realized that by standardizing the size of the containers being used in global trade, loading and unloading of ships and trains could be at least partially mechanized, thereby making the transfer from one mode of transportation to another seamless. This way products could remain in their containers from the point of manufacture to delivery, resulting in reduced costs in terms of labor and potential damage.
In McLean created the standard cargo container , which is basically still the standard today. He originally built it at a length of 33 feet — soon increased to 35 — and 8 feet wide and tall. This system dramatically reduced the cost of loading and unloading a ship.
Containers also made it much easier to protect cargo from the elements or pirates, since they are made of durable steel and remain locked during transport. There are actually a few different standard sizes, such as 40 feet long or a little taller, though they all have the same width. One of the key advantages is that whatever size a ship uses, they all, like Lego blocks, fit neatly together with virtually no empty spaces.
This innovation made the modern globalized world possible. The quantity of goods carried by containers soared from million metric tons in to about 1. Most of the container traffic flows across the Pacific Ocean or between Europe and Asia. The standardization of container sizes has also led to a surge in ship size. The more containers packed on a ship, the more a shipping company can earn on each journey. In fact, the average size of a container ship has doubled in the past 20 years alone.
New containers like these are not always owned by the company itself or a leasing company, leaving them to sit dormant much like the ex-service ones. Some companies will buy new containers and then sell them off to another company, moving them along before they can be counted as a new shipping container. Using the figures of containers bought from China and those sold to other countries, there are an estimated , new shipping containers added to the global fleet each year.
The reason for this is that with ever-expanding globalization and trade, the shipping container logistics industry is growing rapidly. As this market develops, there will be even more shipping containers being created and sold into the market. Even though these containers are recyclable by traditional means, there are more and more uses coming to light that offer great repurposing options for them. Close Save changes. Order Now. Shipping Containers by the Numbers While some containers are still in use for regular shipping purposes, many are not.
Share on facebook Facebook. Share on linkedin LinkedIn. Share on email Email. Source: Daily Mail 4. Approximately shipping containers are lost at sea each year. Watch a video on the afterlife of a shipping container here 5. It is estimated that there were more than million containers in the world in Source: gCaptain 7. Shipping Containers: 10 Unknown Facts. Source: Freight Filter.
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