The shipping container
A standard steel box cuts the cost of moving goods by an order of magnitude.
- When
- Era
- Contemporary, Holocene
Malcom McLean sends the first container ship in 1956. Loading a ship had been slow, expensive, labour-intensive and prone to theft; standardised boxes that transfer directly between ship, rail and truck reduce port handling costs by well over 90 per cent. It is arguably the single most important enabler of globalised manufacturing, and it destroyed dockworker employment and the districts built around it.