The container revolution

In the early 1900s, the shipping industry was dependent on crates and pallets to transport goods. During this time, materials were primarily moved by workers, with some assistance from cranes, slings and forklifts. Shipping delays and damaged goods were common.

In the U.S., Malcolm McLean, a trucking company owner, was concerned with the amount of time it took to load and unload goods from one carrier to another. While other transporters had experimented with loading bulk items into steel boxes, the boxes were not standardized, which required that goods be unloaded when moving between trucks, ships and trains.

McLean came up with the notion of taking the body from a tractor-trailer with a standard dimension and placing it fully loaded on a ship. In 1956, he oversaw the loading of the Ideal X, a converted tanker that carried 58 tractor-trailer containers.

While containerization took nearly another decade to catch on, McLean’s concept of containerization revolutionized intermodal transportation. With more than 20 million containers moving around the world today, according to Newsweek magazine, containerization is considered one of the top innovations of 20th century logistics.