The Shipping Container—A Revolution That Helps You
By “Awake!” correspondent in Finland
YOUR heart leaps when you receive notice from the customs office that a friend from another country has sent you a valuable parcel. What could the package possibly contain? Your anticipation grows as you go down to the customs station to find out. Then—the parcel is there, all right—but what a disappointment! It was damaged and its contents were ruined.
Or, as the sender, what if you learn that the package you shipped with such loving care was ruined before your friend received it? What frustration! Or, if you are a merchant, how do you feel if your goods arrive too late to be of value to the purchaser? Annoyances such as these have often occurred when parcels are sent by ship.
Many years ago journeys by ship were expected to be slow, taking several months. Even though loading and unloading a large number of items took several days, this was minor compared to the length of the journey. Manpower got the job done and the goods usually remained relatively undamaged.
But as the volume of shipping increased over the years and dock workers’ pay spiraled, loading was mechanized. The goal came to be getting the time spent in port down to a minimum to cut costs for both the merchants and the ship owners. Of course, goods broke more easily when rapidly moving machines did the loading, with ever more pressure to speed up. Shipments made up of many small pieces were hard to keep together during the different stages of a long journey. Some were lost. Customs checks at border crossings added to the problem. A solution had to be found for such problems.
The Shipping Container Develops
How could all this handling of many small pieces be eliminated? Well, as early as 1886 the idea of “container” freighting appeared in a German magazine. But it was not until 1928 that there was significant progress. At that time certain European railway companies signed a contract in Rome to transport and exchange “containers.” These were large boxes filled with a number of smaller packages. The boxes were sealed and then transported to their destination without the usual customs inspections at each border.
Favorable experience with this pioneering system inspired the idea of transporting goods by ship in strong packing containers of standard size. This idea began to be investigated in France in 1953 and 1954. A conference arranged by the United Nations in 1954 heard the result of this investigation. It was claimed that shipping expenses could be reduced as much as 30 percent by using containers. Fastening devices were installed on the decks of some tankers to try out the idea. The experiment was a success!
Soon the ISO (International Standard Organization) declared that a new cargo unit had been born, the container. It was designated to be a durable box with a capacity of one cubic meter (1.3 cubic yards). The term “container” has now broadened also to cover this entire means of transporting goods, by air, land or sea. The essential common feature is that the goods are enclosed in a sturdy box that is taken to its destination sealed.
Nowadays the standard container is a much larger box, either twenty or forty feet long (about 6 or 12 meters) and eight feet (2.4 meters) wide. It looks like the enclosed van of a truck-trailer, but without wheels. It is built to withstand the effects of being moved fully loaded by cranes, forklift trucks or other equipment.
Shipping agencies and shipowners rent whole containers to merchants or collect several smaller shipments together to fill one container destined for the same port. These are transported to and from the docks by means of specially designed railroad flatcars, as well as low trailers towed by truck.
The shipments have a considerably better chance to remain undamaged, since, during the journey, the individual pieces do not have to be moved one by one. The danger of going astray is not so great either, as the entire container is clearly addressed to the port of destination, and it is not easy to lose a 20- or 40-foot box.
On the docks, this has meant a revolution in the pace of loading. At a fully equipped container port, a container ship may be unloaded, reloaded and ready for the return trip within a day, whereas a conventional cargo liner, with half the capacity, could require a week or more for turnaround. A single container ship may thus replace four or more conventional cargo carriers.
The largest container vessels can carry as many as 2,500 twenty-foot containers at a time. The busiest container traffic in the world is between Europe and the United States, where a number of the costly container-handling facilities have been built. The longest combined transport route using containers is from Europe to Japan across Siberia. Soviet ships transport containers from European ports to Leningrad, where they are loaded onto railroad cars for the trip across Siberia to the Pacific coast. Then they are taken to Japan by ship. Even within individual countries, adaptations of the container system are being used extensively.
The “Ro-Ro” Method
A slightly different development is the related “ro-ro” (short for “roll on, roll off”) method of shipping. The freight is simply brought onto the ship and taken off again on wheels, requiring no cranes at all. Specially designed “ro-ro” ships have a large door in the bow or stern through which vehicles can be driven. Ramps or hydraulic lifts get them to the level assigned, where they are driven to the final location.
The interior of the ship is thus much like a seagoing parking garage. About fifty of these truck-trailer combinations fit on one such ship, or eighty of the forty-foot (12-meter) trailers alone. Hence, the truck, or “tractor,” may remain with the trailer containers, or one tractor may tow several such containers onto the ship, which later dispenses them to waiting tractors at the port of destination.
In northern Europe and Scandinavia, where sea gulfs separate land areas, truck-trailer transport on ships was adopted over fifteen years ago. The advantage, of course, is that when the goods are once loaded into the trailer, they do not have to be moved again. The whole container moves on its own wheels right to the destination. In this way refrigerated trucks carry meat from Finland to as far away as Italy.
This form of shipping has grown so rapidly in recent times that it has actually become a new trade. Many truck drivers travel abroad continually, living in the cabins of their trucks or on the ships. Many “ro-ro” ships have comfortable cabins on board for the truck drivers, and different ways for passing the time are provided, such as games, saunas, and so forth.
Containers by Air
Containerization has also become common in the field of air freight. Of course, the containers differ in appearance, size and construction from those used for sea and land transport. They must be curved to match the walls of the plane so that the whole cargo space can be used to the best advantage. Some freight-carrying planes are designed so that either the tail or the nose folds back on hinges like a door. The shaped containers can thus easily be loaded into the cargo space.
What about applying the container concept to shipping people by air? The idea is not as outlandish as it might seem at first. There already has been some discussion by transportation planners and technical magazines about the possibility. The advantages are similar to those of freight containerization. Currently, expensive jet planes have to stand at the airport for quite a long time while passengers deplane, luggage is unloaded, the compartment is cleaned, supplies are replenished and new passengers are seated.
Planners hope to be able to reduce this time by building planes so that the entire passenger compartment can be changed! This would make the compartment a sort of giant “container.” The passengers could take their seats and then the whole sealed compartment could be clamped securely to the body of the aircraft. Part of the plane’s body would thus be changed at the airport, requiring somewhat less time for turnaround than the present method. Only time will tell whether such an unusual idea will ever take hold.
Some Problems
As with many advances in other fields, there has been a price to pay. The men working on the docks, for example, see containerization as a threat to their jobs, since it decreases the need for manpower and thus can cause unemployment. So the container “revolution” looks a little different from their standpoint. However, dock workers are being trained to meet the new requirements, and many new terminals are springing up where they can work. It appears that containerization and automation of shipments are here to stay.
So, even though your package may still occasionally be damaged or be late in coming, the container revolution certainly has contributed to the speed, efficiency and quality of handling. You can now be confident that if your parcel is shipped in a container, it will much more likely arrive in good shape and on time.