Maritime Transportation And Shipping Talk

The Container, the use of it and it’s place in Maritime Transportation has been going through a process of change over the last few years that could not have been foreseen back in the 50’s when the pioneers like Malcolm McLean, the founder of Sea-Land started the adventure of carrying full truck chassis onboard ships. Some of these changes are evident in the type of ships that are being used and other changes are evident in the type of equipment being used both onboard and ashore alike. Containers are moving in virtual space. There are unmanned equipment being used, control is done remotely by computer and a large volume of containers are being handled every day with no human present except for in the control tower overlooking the whole thing.

Back again a bit to the beginning of Ships Containers and how it all started. USA was the first country in the world to have containers on ships and if my memory serves me right it was the founder of “Sea-Land” Mr. Malcolm McLean that started it all. With a background from his trucking business he found a way for his trucks to bypass the different state regulations for trucking. Having a North South trucking route from New York to Texas he simply loaded the truck trailers onto a ship and transported them directly to Houston Texas. In the beginning the whole trailer chassis was loaded onboard but it was difficult to stow this way. The next step was to have removable containers from the trucks that was loaded onboard and could be stacked. The size that Mr. McLean used was 35 feet long. Box container had been in use for many years by the US Army and also by the British Railway. These containers bare no standardization at all. They existed in many sizes and were also made in wood before they became metal, as they are today, however the principal use was road and rail. Mr. McLean was really the first one to develop this container to suit maritime transportation. He could see the need for a standard box that would fit on truck, rail and could also be easily loaded onboard a ship. This is how he came to the size of 20’ long by 8’ wide by 8’ high. The popular term TEU was derived from this measure and translates to Twenty-foot Equivalent Units. These first containers that was used was loaded onboard and placed on deck of Tank Ships. These ships had a very small capacity for “containers” but in those days it was considered a revolution having a 58 containers on deck.

Technorati Tags: Maritime Transportation, Containers, Container Ships