May 2, 2007
The invention of the box that changed the world (no, not THAT box!)
... Some inventions, however, no matter how important, just don’t get the credit due them. The stirrup, for instance, is so simple and, once invented, so obvious that it is hard to imagine riding a horse without it. But although mounted cavalry made the chariot obsolete beginning about 1000 B.C., the stirrup was only invented, in India, around 200 B.C., and it didn’t reach Europe until the eighth century A.D. Once it did, it made the mounted knight the dominant instrument of European warfare, profoundly affecting medieval history.
The twentieth-century equivalent of the stirrup, perhaps, is the cargo container, which was first used when a ship sailed out of Newark, New Jersey, bound for Houston, on April 26, 1956. No one would call the cargo container sexy. It is, after all, just a metal box. Nor does it usually get the credit it deserves for initiating an economic revolution.
Much of the expense of freight transportation has always lain in breaking bulk, when goods are transferred from one form of transportation, such as a ship, to another, such as a truck, train, or river steamer. Since men first went down to the sea in ships, cargo was loaded on board piecemeal and unloaded the same way. This called for great skill both to ensure that cargo space was used to the utmost and that weight was properly distributed. Modern cargo ships required sometimes hundreds of stevedores to be unloaded quickly, and then the cargo had to be loaded piece by piece onto trucks or trains to get to its final destination. It was a cumbersome and expensive process.
In the early 1950s an American trucking executive named Malcom (that’s how he spelled it) McLean initiated a better idea: Carry the cargo in aluminum and steel containers that could fit directly on flatbed railroad cars or trucks. A few crane operators could then load or unload a ship and have the goods on their way in a matter of hours.
McLean had been born near the small town of Maxton, North Carolina, in 1913. A born entrepreneur, he started in the trucking business in 1934, hauling oil for a gas station he was managing in nearby Red Springs. By 1940 he owned 30 trucks. The war proved a bonanza for him, and his revenues in 1946 were 10 times what they had been in 1940.
In 1937, waiting while lumber was being offloaded from his truck and loaded on a ship, McLean thought about how much more efficient it would be if the entire truck, in effect, cargo and all, could simply be put aboard the ship and then rolled off on the other side of the ocean. He was unable to do anything with his idea at the time, but when he sold his trucking company in 1955 for $25 million he could and did. He bought a shipping company and two World War II tankers and converted them to hold containers....
The twentieth-century equivalent of the stirrup, perhaps, is the cargo container, which was first used when a ship sailed out of Newark, New Jersey, bound for Houston, on April 26, 1956. No one would call the cargo container sexy. It is, after all, just a metal box. Nor does it usually get the credit it deserves for initiating an economic revolution.
Much of the expense of freight transportation has always lain in breaking bulk, when goods are transferred from one form of transportation, such as a ship, to another, such as a truck, train, or river steamer. Since men first went down to the sea in ships, cargo was loaded on board piecemeal and unloaded the same way. This called for great skill both to ensure that cargo space was used to the utmost and that weight was properly distributed. Modern cargo ships required sometimes hundreds of stevedores to be unloaded quickly, and then the cargo had to be loaded piece by piece onto trucks or trains to get to its final destination. It was a cumbersome and expensive process.
In the early 1950s an American trucking executive named Malcom (that’s how he spelled it) McLean initiated a better idea: Carry the cargo in aluminum and steel containers that could fit directly on flatbed railroad cars or trucks. A few crane operators could then load or unload a ship and have the goods on their way in a matter of hours.
McLean had been born near the small town of Maxton, North Carolina, in 1913. A born entrepreneur, he started in the trucking business in 1934, hauling oil for a gas station he was managing in nearby Red Springs. By 1940 he owned 30 trucks. The war proved a bonanza for him, and his revenues in 1946 were 10 times what they had been in 1940.
In 1937, waiting while lumber was being offloaded from his truck and loaded on a ship, McLean thought about how much more efficient it would be if the entire truck, in effect, cargo and all, could simply be put aboard the ship and then rolled off on the other side of the ocean. He was unable to do anything with his idea at the time, but when he sold his trucking company in 1955 for $25 million he could and did. He bought a shipping company and two World War II tankers and converted them to hold containers....