How Shipping Containers Took Over the World (then broke it)

A stellar video all around

Hi
the invention of the shipping container is up there with the invention of fire and agriculture as to its effect on humanity
,,,
BUT it is ONLY the 2nd part of a TWO part story
the 1st part is the Brentwood Accords signed in 1944
Where the USA chained the world by putting the US Navy in the service of the Commons -- or Inn the service of the good of the human race
...
These TWO events combined gave us the world we know today

Very interesting article from someone who is involved in tank container logistics

Container ships are likely to continue to grow indefinitely. It’s just driven by the laws of economics and the massive economies of scale caused by the square-cube law. Larger ships use less fuel per ton of cargo, so they can carry a given amount of freight for less cost than smaller ships by spending less on fuel for each container.

And as for the impacts, globalization is never going away. From an economics perspective, any instance where two groups of people can do the same job for different rates, the ones who are asking for less money are going to get the business. Globalization isn’t exploitative, it’s matching people who want to do work with work that needs to be done, and it has lifted a billion people out of poverty. The reasons for offshoring are simply that people overseas want the work more than people in places like Britain. You can tell, because the British workers need to be offered a lot more money to entice them to do the job, and they still might go on strike anyway.

After third advertising video, I stopped watching. Please have some respect for watchers.

A bit boring and overloaded with numbers that won't be memorized anyway

May I show this to my Logistics tutor and her young class as a brilliant reference

The idea of a standardised container was discussed in Europe a decade earlier but as usual squabbling and dithering meant nothing was ever accomplished which was why the US model (measured in feet and inches much to European chagrin) was adopted. The first person pushing for the UK to adopt that standard was the much loved Dr Richard Beeching in 1963 who saw it was the next logical step along with his railway cuts. He was reviled by the trade union backed Labour Party at the time who won the 1964 general election……and immediately shut the lines he recommended and encouraged the introduction of the container in the UK. Harold Bloody Wilson!

Honestly I like the look of ships of the pre-container era.

i think they need need to say to every port whats the average amount of containers that they can load/unload in a 24 hour period, then work out that say a 10000 TEU ships are preffered for most ports as they can be in and out within that time period which might be more efficient than a ship holding double the cargo but taking 3 times longer to unload.

You should have had a Sealand container on your desk

Excellent presentation...

Shipping containers, the guy was genius!
Trade couldnt cope without it today...

I'll level with Marc. he did mention it, and i want to emphasize, a good portion of London and similar cities in the UK never recovered from the massive unemployment and devaluation of skills and time "Containerisation" brough. You had a shipping and naval capital of the world Great Britain, a new type of shipping added to the damage of moving the ports completely away and also the economic collapse of the British Empire at this time due to War loans and just dealing with the overall fallout of WW2. This was probably another reason added to the pile for the death of the entire economy in the North of the UK. Sunderland, Newcastle, Glasgow, Redcar, Hull, Dundee, Greenock. etc etc. the perfect storm hit the north of the UK shipping and maritime enterprises based in the UK as a whole after WW2 left or collapsed, the steel of Sheffield and export shuts down, the coal dries up in Yorkshire mines same with Yorkshire stone quarries shut in favour of cheaper stone in India, brick factories shut again to go overseas, ship building dies across the board in port town, and cheap travel abroad means sea side towns other than Whitby and Scarborough pretty much died out, hell even wool from British farmers becomes less and less used as Polymer plastic fabrics are becoming the big trend and still haven't gone back. And its all these things and collapse of the UK economy at that time after WW2, that still hurts the UK towns today, as much as 50 years later or more. Sunderland still down and having the biggest amount of money for a city centre rejuvenation program recorded in UK history from the government ahead of approval, Redcar getting money to bring people in and again bring a kickstart to an economy. the cities primarily in the north still haven't recovered from the shipbuilding going away and the cargo shipping becoming so streamlined was the last nail in the coffin i think.

My son is a graduate of the California Maritime Academy and the captain of the Maersk Chicago, one of the few US flagged ships. He travels between the east coast of the US, all the way over to Mumbai India, with everything in between. He started as a Chief Mate, then took over after his boss (former Captain) who retired a few years ago. Feel free to reach out to me, as he has shared quite a bit of his experiences onboard his ship with me.

I too worked on Sealand’s container ships while they were docked at the Port of Oakland, servicing the computer. We normally had 8 hours to complete our work.

the future of intermodal transport is by air... boeing and others are looking into autonomous solar powered air ships... i forget the teu... i think its around 1000... skipping rail/port transfers for inland shipping... blimps are gonna make a comeback...

The wall and roof steel thickness of a container is only 2mm.

That was very well presented. I live on the bank of Southampton Water, and every time one of these massive ships sail by, I think "That's the Global Economy". Regarding containers, I am pretty sure there is a standardized container for air freight too.
I hope your new box is well insulated: we rented one, and in summer it was like an oven, but in cold weather it ran with condensation. Spray foam might be the simplest solution!

that is one realistic looking container

Great video as always but gotta point out my boy Calum has him some Public Enemy on cassette. You just went up even more notches on my scale bud

No one can get mad now if you say you appreciate an "SS Warrior"

I sailed on both containerships and breakbulk cargo ships in the 70s. Containerships were more efficient, but much less fun. I miss the breakbulk ships, not so much the boxboats.

Lmao

I can't believe I'm rewatching a video about the history of containers and enjoying it again.

👍

What I find most amazing is that ships were loaded in the 1960s in exactly the same way as they were loaded 3000 years ago.

Im going to blame dropshipping

they can even be found under water.

This will soon become an important issue in space industry as the Starship begins to be employed for heavy freight to Luna.

How does he only have around 200k subscribers?!

I own two

I started on the docks in Los Angeles in 1959 & after 43 years I retired in Washington state and this video encapsulates everything I saw over the years, from packing bananas and throwing hides in the holds of old ships to the crazy robots moving containers on the modern waterfront. There have been enormous changes over the years & I’m sure there will be even more, progress just keeps on moving & all you can do is adapt …

Great content keep up the great work . But does anyone else think he looks really similar to @BasicallyHomeless ?

You know an idea is good when it seems so obvious after.

WOW man , why do you Fundamentally Change Numbers, into Fractions ??

Somebody still has to load the contents of the container. Kinda shifts the costs of shipping to someone else.

Your next mission impossible assignment, explain empty steel cargo container resonating "boom" noise on American trains returning to ports through towns. Long trains through rural states and long freight routes, same regular slow speed, same steel rail track gaps, same railcar length steel wheel spacing, equals two empty container booms per second. Lasts for hours. Not a disco or dance music, not a rock band or car radio, not a factory. Mystery? Answers?

Excellent video

they have made an error at the beginning of the design and carried it on :/

New subscriber. Thanks

one thing you didn't cover (in this otherwise excellent video): nowadays we have oversize containers, 45-50 ft, where the anchor holes are at the normal 40 ft so they can still be lifted with the standardized cranes and moved by standard trucks/train cars. The extra length eats into the gaps between stacks on the ships, that otherwise exist to allow the ships to flex without having the container stacks crash into each other, and thus they can only be hauled by certain ships, and must be placed in specific parts of these ships where there's space for these longer containers. It's an odd deviation from the standard just to haul a little bit more, but creates an extra complication, which is exactly the kind of thing the standardization of the containers was meant to remove. There's also the issue with refrigerated containers, which require constant power supply, which again means they can't be placed just anywhere on the ships (and most ships can only supply a certain amount of refrigerated containers because of the energy requirement), and require ports to have areas where the containers can be plugged in, while they wait to be transported.

Also, while loading/unloading containers is relatively fast, they still often sit in the container terminals for several days when they come in while they wait for their connecting ship/train/truck, and that again is a problem that's ever increasing with the bigger ships. Rotterdam for instance has an enormous buffer area just to temporarily hold containers, because of the ridiculous amount they have to hold on to because the really big ships block the port, so the ships that have to take over the containers can't dock

Yeah, for whatever reason a 40' cargo worthy container in Aug of 2020 was 2800, when this video was made the same size container is 5500. Because there is a " shortage" BS.

Fantastic video! Thank you!

The $ decides how to ship Hombre's.

Yeah now you have to steal entire container instead of one box .... Genius 🤣

They terk our jerbs!

Wish you covered why we rarely see container trucks. As you said the orginal vision was same container in ships, trains, and trucks, but for the most part we stopped short at trucks, opting to move inventory from the container into a truck and the reverse.

I find your accent cool, what's your nationality? Scot???

Brilliant. Thank you