CONTAINERIZATION

The containerization of cargo started in the year 1956.   Malcom P. McLeanthe "Father of Containerization",   had the idea of rationalizing goods transport by avoiding the constant loading and unloading from one means of transport to another way back at the end of the 1930s at the port of Hoboken, when still operating as a small-scale hauler. To start with, McLean would load complete trucks onto ships, in order to transport them as close as possible to their destination. The development of standardized containers and trailers, moved by tractors, made it possible to ship just the trailers with the containers, so saving on space and costs. Later, the trailers were also left behind and the ships transported just the container. 

In 1955 , with his ambition he bought a steamship company   and he appropriately named his company Sea-Land Inc with the idea of transporting entire truck trailers with their cargo still inside. He realized it would be much simpler and quicker to have one container that could be lifted from a vehicle directly on to a ship without first having to unload its contents. This ship left Newark on 26th April 1956 carrying fifty-eight containers, which it transported to Houston. The first ship designed to carry only containers is the "Maxton", a converted tanker, which could carry sixty containers as deck cargo. That was in 1956.

 At the end of the 1990s, McLean sold his company to the Maersk shipping company, but his company name lives on in the name Maersk Sealand.

The majority of containers used worldwide today comply with the ISO standard, with 20'- and 40'-long containers predominating. For some years, the ISO standard has come repeatedly under pressure. As stowage factors increase for most goods, many forwarders want longer, wider and higher containers, preferably all at once. Some shipowners have given in to the pressure and containers of dimensions larger than provided for by the ISO standard are now encountered distinctly more frequently. "Jumbo" containers of 45' and 48' in length, widths of 8'6" (2.60 m) and heights of 9'6" (2.90 m) have been in existence for some years. Efforts to build even larger containers, e.g. 24' (7.43 m) and 49' (14.40 m) boxes 2.60 m wide and 2.90 m high, are mostly confined to the USA. Even 53' long containers have been approved for use for some time throughout the USA, while some states will even allow 57'

His ideas were based on the theory that efficiency could be vastly improved through a system of "intermodalism", in which the same container, with the same cargo, can be transported with minimum interruption via different transport modes during its journey. 

Containers could be moved seamlessly between ships, trucks and trains. This would simplify the whole logistical process and, eventually, implementing this idea led to a revolution in cargo transportation and international trade over the next 50 years.