Section 1 of 4 · 3 pages
Everything that had to change around the box
A standard box is only useful if everything it touches is standard too. Between 1956 and the end of the 1960s the machine, the yard, the ship and the berth were all rebuilt around eight feet of steel — and the argument that mattered most happened in committee rooms, not on a quay.
Break-bulk needed pallets, slings and a shed behind the berth. The container needed none of them and a great deal of flat land instead.
The 3 pages in this section
- Everything that had to change around the boxMalcom McLean's Ideal X sailed from Newark in April 1956, and the interesting part is the decade of cranes, yards and contracts that followed.
- Why the standard was the hard partCorner castings and dimensions had to be agreed internationally before a box loaded in one country could be lifted in another.
- TEU is a unit of account, not a boxCapacity is counted in twenty-foot equivalents, which is why the figures rarely match the boxes you can see.
The other three sections