1928 Before containerization, goods were usually handled manually as
break bulk cargo. Typically, goods would be loaded onto a vehicle from the factory and taken to a port warehouse where they would be offloaded and stored awaiting the next vessel. When the vessel arrived, they would be moved to the side of the ship along with other cargo to be lowered or carried into the hold and packed by dock workers. The ship might call at several other ports before off-loading a given consignment of cargo. Each port visit would delay the delivery of other cargo. Delivered cargo might then have been offloaded into another warehouse before being picked up and delivered to its destination. Multiple handling and delays made transport costly, time-consuming and unreliable. Containerization has its origins in early
coal mining regions in England beginning in the late 18th century. In 1766
James Brindley designed the "starvationer" box boat with ten wooden containers, to transport coal from
Worsley Delph (quarry) to Manchester by
Bridgewater Canal. In 1795,
Benjamin Outram opened the
Little Eaton Gangway, upon which coal was carried in
wagons built at his Butterley Ironwork. The horse-drawn wheeled wagons on the gangway took the form of containers, which, loaded with coal, could be transshipped from canal
barges on the
Derby Canal, which Outram had also promoted. By the 1830s, railroads were carrying containers that could be transferred to other modes of transport. The
Liverpool and Manchester Railway in the UK was one of these, making use of "simple rectangular timber boxes" to convey coal from Lancashire collieries to Liverpool, where a crane transferred them to horse-drawn carriages. Originally used for moving coal on and off barges, "loose boxes" were used to containerize coal from the late 1780s, at places like the
Bridgewater Canal. By the 1840s, iron boxes were in use as well as wooden ones. The early 1900s saw the adoption of closed container boxes designed for movement between road and rail.
Twentieth century On 17 May 1917,
Louisville, Kentucky, native Benjamin Franklin "B. F." Fitch (1877–1956) launched commercial use of "demountable bodies" in
Cincinnati, Ohio, which he had designed as transferable containers. In 1919, his system was extended to over 200 containers serving 21 railway stations with 14 freight trucks. In 1919,
engineer Stanisław Rodowicz developed the first draft of the container system in
Poland. In 1920, he built a prototype of the biaxial wagon. The
Polish-Bolshevik War stopped development of the container system in Poland. The U.S. Post Office contracted with the
New York Central Railroad to move mail via containers in May 1921 . In 1926, a regular connection of the luxury passenger train from London to Paris,
Golden Arrow/
Fleche d'Or, by
Southern Railway and
French Northern Railway, began. For transport of passengers' baggage four containers were used. These containers were loaded in London or Paris and carried to ports, Dover or Calais, on flat cars in the UK and "CIWL Pullman Golden Arrow Fourgon of CIWL" in France . At the Second World Motor Transport Congress in Rome, September 1928, Italian senator
Silvio Crespi proposed the use of containers for road and railway transport systems, using collaboration rather than competition. This would be done under the auspices of an international organ similar to the Sleeping Car Company, which provided international carriage of passengers in sleeping wagons. After the
Wall Street crash of 1929 in
New York and the subsequent Great Depression, many countries were without any means to transport cargo. The railroads were sought as a possibility to transport cargo, and there was an opportunity to bring containers into broader use . In 1930, the
Chicago & Northwestern Railroad began shipping containers between Chicago and Milwaukee. Their efforts ended in the spring of 1931 when the
Interstate Commerce Commission disallowed the use of a flat rate for the containers. In February 1931 the first container ship was launched. It was called the Autocarrier, owned by Southern Railway UK. It had 21 slots for containers of Southern Railway.. Under auspices of the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris in
Venice on September 30, 1931, on one of the platforms of the Maritime Station (Mole di Ponente), practical tests assessed the best construction for European containers as part of an international competition.. In 1931, in the U.S., B. F. Fitch designed the two largest and heaviest containers in existence. One measured by by with a capacity of in , and a second measured by by , with a capacity of in .. In November 1932, in
Enola, Pennsylvania, the first
container terminal in the world was opened by the
Pennsylvania Railroad. In the mid-1930s, the
Chicago Great Western Railway and then the
New Haven Railroad began "
piggyback" service (transporting highway freight trailers on flatcars) limited to their own railroads. The Chicago Great Western Railway filed a U.S. patent in 1938 on their method of securing trailers to a flatcars using chains and turnbuckles. Other components included wheel chocks and ramps for loading and unloading the trailers from the flatcars. By 1953, the
Chicago, Burlington and Quincy, the
Chicago and Eastern Illinois, and the
Southern Pacific railroads had joined the innovation. Most of the rail cars used were surplus flatcars equipped with new decks. By 1955, an additional 25 railroads had begun some form of piggyback trailer service.
World War II During World War II, the
Australian Army used containers to more easily deal with various
breaks of gauge in the railroads. These non-stackable containers were about the size of the later
20-foot ISO container and perhaps made mainly of wood. , showing four different UIC-590 pa-containers During the same time, the
United States Army started to combine items of uniform size, lashing them onto a pallet,
unitizing cargo to speed the loading and unloading of transport ships. In 1947 the
Transportation Corps developed the
Transporter, a rigid, corrugated steel container with a carrying capacity, for shipping household goods of officers in the field. It was long, , and high, with double doors on one end, mounted on skids, and had lifting rings on the top four corners. During the
Korean War the Transporter was evaluated for handling sensitive military equipment and, proving effective, was approved for broader use. Theft of material and damage to
wooden crates convinced the army that steel containers were needed. at railing, Port Newark, 1957
Mid-twentieth century In April 1951, at
Zürich Tiefenbrunnen railway station, the Swiss Museum of Transport and
Bureau International des Containers (BIC) held demonstrations of container systems, with the aim of selecting the best solution for Western Europe. Present were representatives from France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Great Britain, Italy and the United States. The system chosen for Western Europe was based on the Netherlands' system for consumer goods and waste transportation called
Laadkisten (literally, "loading bins"), in use since 1934. This system used
roller containers that were moved by rail, truck and ship, in various configurations up to a capacity of , and up to size. This became the first post World War II European railway standard
UIC 590, known as "pa-Behälter." It was implemented in the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, West Germany, Switzerland, Sweden and Denmark. In 1952 the U.S. Army developed the Transporter into the CONtainer EXpress or
CONEX box system. The size and capacity of the CONEXes were about the same as the Transporter, but the system was made
modular, by the addition of a smaller, half-size unit of long, wide and high. CONEXes could be stacked three high, and protected their contents from the elements. making this the first worldwide application of intermodal containers.
Purpose-built ships . The first vessels purpose-built to carry containers had begun operation in 1926 for the regular connection of the luxury passenger train between London and Paris, the
Golden Arrow/
Fleche d'Or. Four containers were used for the conveyance of passengers' baggage. These containers were loaded in London or Paris and carried to the ports of Dover or Calais. None of these services was particularly successful. First, the containers were rather small, with 52% of them having a volume of less than . Almost all European containers were made of wood and used canvas lids, and they required additional equipment for loading into rail or truck bodies. The world's first purpose-built container vessel was
Clifford J. Rodgers, built in Montreal in 1955 and owned by the
White Pass and Yukon Corporation. Her first trip carried 600 containers between North Vancouver, British Columbia, and Skagway, Alaska, on November 26, 1955. In Skagway, the containers were unloaded to purpose-built
railroad cars for transport north to Yukon, in the first
intermodal service using trucks, ships, and railroad cars. Southbound containers were loaded by shippers in Yukon and moved by rail, ship, and truck to their consignees without opening. This first intermodal system operated from November 1955 until 1982. The first truly successful container shipping company dates to April 26, 1956, when American trucking entrepreneur McLean put 58
trailer vans later called containers, aboard a refitted tanker ship, the , and sailed them from
Newark, New Jersey, to
Houston, Texas. Independently of the events in Canada, McLean had the idea of using large containers that never opened in transit and that were transferable on an intermodal basis, among trucks, ships, and railroad cars. McLean had initially favored the construction of "trailerships"—taking trailers from large trucks and stowing them in a ship's
cargo hold. This method of stowage, referred to as
roll-on/roll-off, was not adopted because of the large waste in potential cargo space on board the vessel, known as broken
stowage. Instead, McLean modified his original concept into loading just the containers, not the chassis, onto the ship; hence the designation "container ship" or "box" ship. (See also
pantechnicon van and
trolley and lift van.)
Toward standards During the first 20 years of containerization, many container sizes and corner fittings were used. There were dozens of incompatible container systems in the US alone. Among the biggest operators, the
Matson Navigation Company had a fleet of containers, while
Sea-Land Service, Inc used containers. The standard sizes and fitting and reinforcement norms that now exist evolved out of a lengthy and complex series of compromises among international shipping companies, European railroads, US railroads, and US trucking companies. Everyone had to sacrifice something. For example, to McLean's frustration, Sea-Land's 35-foot container was not adopted as one of the standard container sizes. In the end, four important ISO (
International Organization for Standardization) recommendations standardized containerization globally: • January 1968:
ISO 668 defined the terminology, dimensions and ratings. • July 1968:
R-790 defined the identification markings. • January 1970:
R-1161 made recommendations about corner fittings. • October 1970:
R-1897 set out the minimum internal dimensions of general purpose freight containers. Based on these standards, the first
TEU container ship was the Japanese '''' from shipowner NYK, which started sailing in 1968 and could carry 752 TEU containers. In the US, containerization and other advances in shipping were impeded by the
Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), which was created in 1887 to keep railroads from using monopolist pricing and rate discrimination, but fell victim to
regulatory capture. By the 1960s, ICC approval was required before any shipper could carry different items in the same vehicle or change rates. The fully integrated systems in the US today became possible only after the ICC's regulatory oversight was cut back (and abolished in 1995). Trucking and rail were deregulated in the 1970s and maritime rates were deregulated in 1984.
Double-stacked rail transport, where containers are stacked two high on railway cars, was introduced in the US. The concept was developed by Sea-Land and the Southern Pacific railroad. The first standalone double-stack container car (or single-unit COFC well car) was delivered in July 1977. The five-unit well car, the industry standard, appeared in 1981. Initially, these double-stack railway cars were deployed in regular train service. Ever since American President Lines initiated in 1984 a dedicated double-stack container train service between Los Angeles and Chicago, transport volumes increased rapidly.
Effects Containerization greatly reduced the expense of
international trade and increased its speed, especially of consumer goods and commodities. It also dramatically changed the character of port cities worldwide. Prior to highly mechanized container transfers, crews of 20 to 22
longshoremen would pack individual cargoes into the hold of a ship. After containerization, large crews of longshoremen were not necessary at port facilities, and the profession changed drastically. Meanwhile, the port facilities needed to support containerization changed. One effect was the decline of some ports and the rise of others. At the
Port of San Francisco, the former piers used for loading and unloading were no longer required, but there was little room to build the vast holding lots needed for storing and sorting containers in transit between different transport modes. As a result, the Port of San Francisco essentially ceased to function as a major commercial port, but the neighboring
Port of Oakland emerged as the second largest on the US West Coast. A similar fate occurred with the relationship between the
ports of Manhattan and New Jersey. In the UK, the
Port of London and
Port of Liverpool declined in importance. Meanwhile, Britain's
Port of Felixstowe and
Port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands emerged as major ports. In general, containerization caused
inland ports on waterways incapable of receiving deep-
draft ship traffic to decline in favor of
seaports, which then built vast container terminals next to deep oceanfront harbors in lieu of the dockfront warehouses and finger piers that had formerly handled break bulk cargo. With intermodal containers, the jobs of packing, unpacking, and sorting cargoes could be performed far from the point of embarkation. Such work shifted to so-called "
dry ports" and gigantic warehouses in rural inland towns, where land and labor were much cheaper than in oceanfront cities. This fundamental transformation of where warehouse work was performed freed up valuable waterfront real estate near the
central business districts of port cities around the world for
redevelopment and led to a plethora of waterfront revitalization projects (such as
warehouse districts). The effects of containerization rapidly spread beyond the shipping industry. Containers were quickly adopted by trucking and rail transport industries for cargo transport not involving sea transport. Manufacturing also evolved to adapt to take advantage of containers. Companies that once sent small consignments began grouping them into containers. Many cargoes are now designed to precisely fit containers. The reliability of containers made
just in time manufacturing possible as component suppliers could deliver specific components on regular fixed schedules. In 2004, global container traffic was 354 million
TEUs, of which 82 percent were handled by the world's top 100 container ports. == Twenty-first century ==