Containerization (or containerisation) is a system of intermodal freight transport cargo transport using standard ISO containers (known as shipping containers, ITUs (Intermodal Transport Units) or isotainers) that can be loaded and sealed intact onto container ships, railroad cars, planes, and trucks.

History

The introduction of containers resulted in vast improvements in port handling efficiency, thus lowering costs and helping lower freight charges and, in turn, boosting trade flows. Almost every manufactured product humans consume spends some time in a container.

Origins

Although having its origins in the late 1780s or earlier, the global standardisation of containers and container handling equipment was one of the important innovations in 20th century logistics.

By the 1830s, railroads on several continents were carrying containers that could be transferred to trucks or ships, but these containers were invariably small by today's standards. Originally used for shipping coal on and off barges, 'loose boxes' were used to containerize coal from the late 1780s, on 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.

In the United Kingdom, several railway companies were using similar containers by the beginning of the 20th century and in the 1920s the Railway Clearing House standardised the RCH container. Five or ten foot long, wooden and non-stackable, these early standard containers were a great success but the standard remained UK-specific.

From 1926 to 1947, in the US, the Chicago North Shore and Milwaukee Railway carried motor carrier vehicles and shippers' vehicles loaded on flatcars between Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Chicago, Illinois. Beginning in 1929, Seatrain Lines carried railroad boxcars on its sea vessels to transport goods between New York and Cuba. In the mid-1930s, the Chicago Great Western Railway and then the New Haven Railroad began "piggy-back" service (transporting highway freight trailers on flatcars) limited to their own railroads. By 1953, the CB&Q, the Chicago and Eastern Illinois and the Southern Pacific railroads had joined the innovation. Most cars were surplus flatcars equipped with new decks. By 1955, an additional 25 railroads had begun some form of piggy-back trailer service.

Toward the end of World War II, the United States Army began using specialized containers to speed up the loading and unloading of transport ships. The army used the term "transporters" to identify the containers, for shipping household goods of officers in the field. A "Transporter" was a reusable container, long, wide, and high, made of rigid steel with a carrying capacity of 9,000 pounds. 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, in addition to handling time, by stevedores at the Port of Pusan, proved to the army that steel containers were needed. In 1952 the army began using the term CONEX, short for "Container Express". The first major shipment of CONEX's (containing engineering supplies and spare parts) were shipped by rail from the Columbus General Depot in Georgia to the Port of San Francisco, then by ship to Yokohama, Japan, and then to Korea, in late 1952. Shipment times were cut almost in half. By the time of the Vietnam War the majority of supplies and materials were shipped with the CONEX. After the U.S. Department of Defense standardized an 8'x8' cross section container in multiples of 10' lengths for military use it was rapidly adopted for shipping purposes.

These standards were adopted in the United Kingdom for containers and rapidly displaced the older wooden containers in the 1950s.

Even the railways of the USSR had their own small containers.

Purpose-built ships

The first vessels purpose-built to carry containers began operation in Denmark in 1951. Ships began carrying containers between Seattle and Alaska in 1951. The world's first truly intermodal container system used the purpose-built container ship the Clifford J. Rodgers, built in Montreal in 1955 and owned by the White Pass and Yukon Route. Its 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 the Yukon, in the first intermodal service using trucks, ships and railroad cars. Southbound containers were loaded by shippers in the Yukon, moved by rail, ship and truck, to their consignees, without opening. This first intermodal system operated from November 1955 for many years.

The U.S. container shipping industry dates to 1956, when trucking entrepreneur Malcom McLean put 58 containers aboard a refitted tanker ship, the Ideal-X, and sailed them from Newark to Houston. What was new in the USA about McLean's innovation was the idea of using large containers that were never opened in transit between shipper and consignee 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 onboard the vessel, known as broken stowage. Instead, he modified his original concept into loading just the containers, not the chassis, onto the ships, hence the designation container ship or "box" ship. See also pantechnicon van and trolley and lift van.

Towards standards

During the first twenty years of growth containerization meant using completely different, and incompatible, container sizes and corner fittings from one country to another. There were dozens of incompatible container systems in the U.S. 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 exist now evolved out of a series of compromises among international shipping companies, European railroads, U.S. railroads, and U.S. trucking companies. Four important ISO recommendations standardised containerisation globally

• January 1968 - R-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

In the United States, the Interstate Commerce Commission was created in 1887 to keep railroads from using monopolist pricing and rate discrimination on customers, especially rural Western farmers, but fell victim to regulatory capture, and by the 1960s, before any shipper could carry different items in the same vehicle, or change rates, the shipper had to have ICC approval, which impeded containerization and other advances in shipping. The United States' present fully integrated systems became possible only after the ICC's regulatory oversight was cut back (and later abolished in 1995), trucking and rail were deregulated in the 1970s and maritime rates were deregulated in 1984.

Today

Containerization has revolutionized cargo shipping. Today, approximately 90% of non-bulk cargo worldwide moves by containers stacked on transport ships; 26% of all containers originate from China. As of 2005, some 18 million total containers make over 200 million trips per year. There are ships that can carry over , for example the "Emma Mærsk", 396 m long, launched August 2006. It has even been predicted that, at some point, container ships will be constrained in size only by the depth of the Straits of Malacca—one of the world's busiest shipping lanes—linking the Indian Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. This so-called Malaccamax size constrains a ship to dimensions of 470 m in length and 60 m wide (1542 feet by 197 feet).

However, few initially foresaw the extent of the influence containerization would bring to the shipping industry. In the 1950s, Harvard University economist Benjamin Chinitz predicted that containerization would benefit New York by allowing it to ship industrial goods produced there more cheaply to the Southern United States than other areas, but did not anticipate that containerization might make it cheaper to import such goods from abroad. Most economic studies of containerization merely assumed that shipping companies would begin to replace older forms of transportation with containerization, but did not predict that the process of containerization itself would have some influence on producers and the extent of trading.

The widespread use of ISO standard containers has driven modifications in other freight-moving standards, gradually forcing removable truck bodies or swap bodies into the standard sizes and shapes (though without the strength needed to be stacked), and changing completely the worldwide use of freight pallets that fit into ISO containers or into commercial vehicles.

Improved cargo security is also an important benefit of containerization. The cargo is not visible to the casual viewer and thus is less likely to be stolen and the doors of the containers are generally sealed so that tampering is more evident. This has reduced the "falling off the truck" syndrome that long plagued the shipping industry.

Use of the same basic sizes of containers across the globe has lessened the problems caused by incompatible rail gauge sizes in different countries. The majority of the rail networks in the world operate on a gauge track known as standard gauge but many countries (such as Russia, Finland, and Spain) use broader gauges while many other countries in Africa and South America use narrower gauges on their networks. The use of container trains in all these countries makes trans-shipment between different gauge trains easier.

ISO standard

Dimensions and payloads

There are five common standardization lengths, 20-ft (6.1 m), 40-ft (12.2 m), 45-ft (13.7 m), 48-ft (14.6 m), and 53-ft (16.2 m). United States domestic standard containers are generally and 53-ft (rail and truck). Container capacity is often expressed in twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU, or sometimes teu). An equivalent unit is a measure of containerized cargo capacity equal to one standard 20 ft (length) × 8 ft (width) container. As this is an approximate measure, the height of the box is not considered, for instance the 9 ft 6 in (2.9 m) High cube and the 4-ft 3-in (1.3 m) half height containers are also called one TEU. Similarly, the 45-ft (13.7 m) containers are also commonly designated as two TEU, although they are 45 and not long. Two TEU are equivalent to one forty-foot equivalent unit (FEU).

The use of Imperial measurements to describe container size (TEU, FEU) reflects the fact that US Department of Defense played a major part in the development of containers. The overwhelming need to have a standard size for containers, in order that they fit all ships, cranes, and trucks, and the length of time that the current container sizes have been in use, makes changing to an even metric size impractical.

The maximum gross mass for a dry cargo container is 24,000 kg, and for a 40-ft (including the 2.87 m (9 ft 6 in) high cube container), it is 30,480 kg. Allowing for the tare mass of the container, the maximum payload mass is therefore reduced to approximately 21,600 kg for , and 26,500 kg for containers.

Since November 2007 48-ft and containers are used also for international ocean shipments. At the moment (April 2008) the only ocean company who offer such containers is APL. However, APL containers have slightly different sizes and weights than standard and containers (that are used in the US by rail and truck services).

Standard containers

The container is the most popular container worldwide. Longer container types have become more common, especially in North America. Shorter containers (e.g. containers) are rare.

The following table shows the weights and dimensions of the three most common types of containers worldwide. The weights and dimensions quoted below are averages, different manufacture series of the same type of container may vary slightly in actual size and weight.

		20′ container		40′ container		45′ high-cube container
		imperial	metric	imperial	metric	imperial	metric
external dimensions	length	20′ 0″	6.096 m	40′ 0″	12.192 m	45′ 0″	13.716 m
	width	8′ 0″	2.438 m	8′ 0″	2.438 m	8′ 0″	2.438 m
	height	8′ 6″	2.591 m	8′ 6″	2.591 m	9′ 6″	2.896 m
interior dimensions	length	18′ 10 ″	5.758 m	39′ 5 ″	12.032 m	44′ 4″	13.556 m
	width	7′ 8 ″	2.352 m	7′ 8 ″	2.352 m	7′ 8 ″	2.352 m
	height	7′ 9 ″	2.385 m	7′ 9 ″	2.385 m	8′ 9 ″	2.698 m
door aperture	width	7′ 8 ⅛″	2.343 m	7′ 8 ⅛″	2.343 m	7′ 8 ⅛″	2.343 m
	height	7′ 5 ¾″	2.280 m	7′ 5 ¾″	2.280 m	8′ 5 ″	2.585 m
volume		1,169 ft³	33.1 m³	2,385 ft³	67.5 m³	3,040 ft³	86.1 m³
maximum gross mass		52,910 lb	24,000 kg	67,200 lb	30,480 kg	67,200 lb	30,480 kg
empty weight		4,850 lb	2,200 kg	8,380 lb	3,800 kg	10,580 lb	4,800 kg
net load		48,060 lb	21,600 kg	58,820 lb	26,500 kg	56,620 lb	25,680 kg

20-ft, "heavy tested" containers are available for heavy goods (e.g. heavy machinery). These containers allow a maximum weight of 67,200 lb (30,480 kg), an empty weight of 5,290 lb (2,400 kg), and a net load of 61,910 lb (28,080 kg).

Types

Various container types are available for different needs:

• General purpose dry van for boxes, cartons, cases, sacks, bales, pallets, drums in standard, high or half height
• High cube palletwide containers for europallet compatibility
• Temperature controlled from −25 °C to +25 °C reefer
• Open top bulktainers for bulk minerals, heavy machinery
• Open side for loading oversize pallet
• Flushfolding flat-rack containers for heavy and bulky semi-finished goods, out of gauge cargo
• Platform or bolster for barrels and drums, crates, cable drums, out of gauge cargo, machinery, and processed timber
• Ventilated containers for organic products requiring ventilation
• Tank containers for bulk liquids and dangerous goods
• Rolling floor for difficult to handle cargo
• Gas bottle
• Generator
• Collapsible ISO
• Swapbody

Numbering

Each container is allocated a reporting mark (ownership code) up to four characters long ending in the letter U, followed by a number up to 9 digits long.

Air freight containers

While major airlines use containers that are custom designed for their aircraft and associated ground handling equipment the IATA has created a set of standard container sizes, the LD-designation sizes are shown below:

Designation	Width (in)	Height (in)	Depth (in)	Base (In)	Max load (lb)	Max load (kg)	Shape
LD-1	92.0	64.0	60.4	61.5	3500	~1588	Type A
LD-2	61.5	64.0	47.0	61.5	2700	~1225	Type A
LD-3	79.0	64.0	60.4	61.5	3500	~1588	Type A
LD-4	96.0	64.0	60.4	n/a	5400	~2449	Rectangular
LD-5	125.0	64.0	60.4	n/a	7000	~3175	Rectangular
LD-6	160.0	64.0	60.4	125.0	7000	~3175	Type B
LD-7	125.0	64.0	80.0	n/a	13300	~6033	Rect. or Contoured
LD-8	125.0	64.0	60.4	96.0	5400	~2449	Type B
LD-9	125.0	64.0	80.0	n/a	13300	~6033	Rect. or Contoured
LD-10	125.0	64.0	60.4	n/a	7000	~3175	Contoured
LD-11	125.0	64.0	60.4	n/a	7000	~3175	Rectangular
LD-29	186.0	64.0	88.0	125.0	13300	~6033	Type B

LD-1, -2, -3, -4, and -8 are those most widely used, together with the rectangular M3 containers.

Issues

Increased efficiency

Although there have been few direct correlations made between containers and job losses, there are a number of texts associating job losses at least in part with containerization. A 1998 study of post-containerization employment at United States ports found that container cargo could be moved nearly twenty times faster than pre-container break bulk. The new system of shipping also allowed for freight consolidating jobs to move from the waterfront to points far inland, which also decreased the number of waterfront jobs.

Additional fuel costs

Containerisation increases the fuel costs of transport and reduces the capacity of the transport as the container itself must be shipped around not just the goods. For certain bulk products this makes containerisation unattractive. For most goods the increased fuel costs and decreased transport efficiencies are currently more than offset by the handling savings.

Hazards

Containers have been used to smuggle contraband. The vast majority of containers are never subjected to scrutiny due to the large number of containers in use. In recent years there have been increased concerns that containers might be used to transport terrorists or terrorist materials into a country undetected. The U.S. government has advanced the Container Security Initiative (CSI), intended to ensure that high-risk cargo is examined or scanned, preferably at the port of departure.

Empty containers

Containers are intended to be used constantly, being loaded with a new cargo for a new destination soon after being emptied of the previous cargo. This is not always possible, and in some cases the cost of transporting an empty container to a place where it can be used is considered to be higher than the worth of the used container. This can result in large areas in ports and warehouses being occupied by empty containers left abandoned. However, empty containers may also be recycled in the form of shipping container architecture, or the steel content salvaged.

Loss at sea

Containers occasionally fall from the ships that carry them, usually during storms; it is estimated that over 10,000 containers are lost at sea each year. For instance, on November 30, 2006, a container washed ashore on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, along with thousands of bags of its cargo of Doritos Chips. Containers lost at sea do not necessarily sink, but seldom float very high out of the water, making them a shipping hazard that is difficult to detect. Freight from lost containers has provided oceanographers with unexpected opportunities to track global ocean currents, notably a cargo of Friendly Floatees.

In 2007 the International Chamber of Shipping and the World Shipping Council began work on a code of practice for container storage, including crew training on parametric rolling, safer stacking and marking of containers and security for above-deck cargo in heavy swell.

Double-stack containerization

Most flatcars cannot carry more than one standard container, but if the rail line has been built with sufficient vertical clearance, a double-stack car can accept a container and still leave enough clearance for another container on top. This usually precludes operation of double-stacked wagons on lines with overhead electric wiring. However, the Betuweroute, which was planned with overhead wiring from the start, has been built with tunnels that do accommodate double-stacked wagons so as to keep the option to economically rebuild the route for double stacking in the future. The overhead wiring would then have to be changed to allow double stacking. Lower than standard size containers are run double stacked under overhead wire in China.

History

• // — Southern Pacific Railroad, with Malcom McLean, (SP) came up with the idea of the first double-stack intermodal car in 1977. SP then designed the first car with ACF Industries that same year. At first it was slow to become an industry standard, then in 1984 American President Lines, started working with the SP and that same year, the first all "double stack" train left Los Angeles, California for South Kearny, New Jersey, under the name of "Stacktrain" rail service. Along the way the train transferred from the SP to Conrail. It saved shippers money and now accounts for almost 70 percent of intermodal freight transport shipments in the United States, in part due to the generous vertical clearances used by U.S. railroads. These lines are diesel operated with no overhead wiring.
• — Double stacking is also used in Australia between Adelaide, Parkes, Perth and Darwin. These are diesel only lines with no overhead wiring.
• — Double stacking is proposed in India for selected freight-only lines. These would be electrified lines with specially high overhead wiring.

Other uses for containers

Shipping container architecture is the use of containers as the basis for housing and other functional buildings for people, either as temporary housing or permanent, and either as a main building or as a cabin or workshop. Containers can also be used as sheds or storage areas in industry and commerce.

Companies

Biggest ISO container companies

Top 10 container shipping companies in order of TEU capacity, first January 2006

Company	TEU capacity	Market Share	Number of ships
A.P. Moller-Maersk Group	1,665,272	18.2%	549
Mediterranean Shipping Company S.A.	865,890	11.7%	376
CMA CGM	507,954	5.6%	256
Evergreen Marine Corporation	477,911	5.2%	153
Hapag-Lloyd	412,344	4.5%	140
China Shipping Container Lines	346,493	3.8%	111
American President Lines	331,437	3.6%	99
Hanjin-Senator	328,794	3.6%	145
COSCO	322,326	3.5%	118
NYK Line	302,213	3.3%	105

Other container systems

• Haus-zu-Haus (Germany)
• RACE (container) (Australia)
• Hellenic Container Transport Ltd (Greece)

International

Before the International Standard Container appeared, various countries had their own containers. These containers were generally small, and not able to be stacked one upon another. Clearly the idea of containerisation is not new, though the implementation of the ISO container was much better done.

Australia

• Less than Car Load (LCL)

Germany

• Von Haus zu Haus (from House to House)

BBC tracking project

On 5 September 2008 the BBC embarked on a year-long project to study international trade and globalization by tracking a shipping container on its journey around the world.

The project tracks a standard 40 foot long shipping container as it is transported by the Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK) shipping line with various cargoes. Through an onboard GPS tracker the Box's past route and current location is being recorded on a live updating map The Box is painted in a special BBC paint scheme and was named after the book, The Box, which was about the effects of containerisation.

The Box's first cargo was a consignment of Chivas Regal whisky from a Glasgow bottling plant to Shanghai, China.

See also

Break bulk Bulk cargo Sidelift Container numbering Container ship Container terminal Intermodal freight transport ISO 668 Portainer cranes		RORO Semi-trailer truck Shipping container architecture Shipping line Tanktainers Unit Load, Unit Load Device, Pallet World petroleum crisis List of busiest container ports

References

Further reading

Economy

• Brian J. Cudahy (2006). Box Boats. Fordham University Press. ISBN 0-8232-2568-2. — How Container Ships Changed the World
• Frank Broeze (2002). The Globalisation of the Oceans. International Maritime Economic History Association. ISBN 0-9730073-3-8. — Containerisation from the 1950s to the Present
• Technique
• ASTM D 5728 Standard Practice for Securement of Cargo in Intermodal and Unimodal Surface Transport
• — types, inspection, climate, stowage, securing, capacity
• — a guidebook for first responders during the initial phase of a dangerous goods/hazardous materials incident
• Container Dimensions and Capacity. Export 911. . In Fiction
• — Novel set in U.S., wherein mystery surrounding a containerized shipment serves as the MacGuffin