Post by spacecowboy2006 on Jan 27, 2018 22:21:44 GMT
Placemarked at Port of Oakland, California, Street View. In the background you can see the lifting craned for loading shipping containers (they look like something out of Star Wars). This is an interesting topic. The text is highly abridged from Wikipedia and if you want to read in depth read the Wiki article.
Wiki Text
Prior to the Second World War, many European countries independently developed container systems.
In 1919, Stanisław Rodowicz, an engineer, developed the first draft of the container system in Poland. In 1920, he built a prototype of the biaxial wagon. The Polish-Bolshevik War stopped development of the container system in Poland.
The US Post Office contracted with the New York Central Railroad to move mail via containers in May 1921. In 1930, the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad began shipping containers between Chicago and Milwaukee. However, their efforts ended in the spring of 1931 when the Interstate Commerce Commission wouldn't allow the use of a flat rate for the containers.
In 1926, a regular connection of the luxury passenger train from London to Paris, Golden Arrow/Fleche d'Or, by Southern Railway and French Northern Railway, began. For transport of passengers' baggage four containers were used. These containers were loaded in London or Paris and carried to ports, Dover or Calais, on flat cars in the UK and "CIWL Pullman Golden Arrow Fourgon of CIWL" in France. At the Second World Motor Transport Congress in Rome, September 1928, Italian senator Silvio Crespi proposed the use of containers for road and railway transport systems, using collaboration rather than competition. This would be done under the auspices of an international organ similar to the Sleeping Car Company, which provided international carriage of passengers in sleeping wagons. In 1928 Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) started regular container service in the northeast United States. After the Wall Street Crash of 1929 in New York and the subsequent Great Depression, many countries were without any means of transport for cargo. The railroads were sought as a possibility to transport cargo, and there was an opportunity to bring containers into broader use. Under auspices of the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris in Venice on September 30, 1931, on one of the platforms of the Maritime Station (Mole di Ponente), practical tests were done to assess the best construction for European containers as part of an international competition.
In the same year, 1931, in USA Benjamin Franklin Fitch designed the two largest and heaviest containers in existence anywhere at the time. One measured 17'6" by 8'0" by 8'0" with a capacity of 30,000 pounds in 890 cubic feet, and a second measured 20'0" by 8'0" by 8'0", with a capacity of 50,000 pounds in 1,000 cubic feet.
In November 1932 in Enola the first container terminal in the world was opened by PRR Pennsylvania RailRoad company.[10] The Fitch hooking system was used for reloading of the containers.
The development of containerization was created in Europe and the US as a way to revitalize rail companies after the Wall Street Crash of 1929, which had caused economic collapse and reduction in use of all modes of transport.
In 1933 in Europe under the auspices of the International Chamber of Commerce the International Container Bureau (French: Bureau International des Conteneurs, B.I.C.) was established. In June 1933, the B.I.C. decided on obligatory parameters for containers used in international traffic. Containers handled by means of lifting gear, such as cranes, overhead conveyors, etc. for traveling elevators (group I containers), constructed after July 1, 1933. Obligatory Regulations.
From 1926 to 1947 in the United States, 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 "piggyback" service (transporting highway freight trailers on flatcars) limited to their own railroads. The Chicago Great Western Railway filed a US federal patent in 1938 on their method of securing each trailer to a flatcar using chains and turnbuckles. Other components included wheel chocks and ramps for loading and unloading the trailers from the flatcars. By 1953, the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy, the Chicago and Eastern Illinois, and the Southern Pacific railroads had joined the innovation. Most of the railcars used were surplus flatcars equipped with new decks. By 1955, an additional 25 railroads had begun some form of piggyback trailer service.
In April 1951, at Zürich Tiefenbrunnen railway station, the Swiss Museum of Transport and Bureau International des Containers (BIC) held demonstrations of container systems, with the aim of selecting the best solution for Western Europe. Present were representatives from France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Great Britain, Italy and the United States. The system chosen for Western Europe was based on the Netherlands' system for consumer goods and waste transportation called Laadkisten (literally, "loading bins"), in use since 1934. This system used roller containers that were moved by rail, truck and ship, in various configurations up to a capacity of 5,500 kg (12,100 lb), and up to 3.1 x 2.3 x 2 metres in size. This became the first post World War II European railway standard UIC 590, known as "pa-Behälter." It was implemented in the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, West Germany, Switzerland, Sweden and Denmark.[18] With the popularization of the larger ISO containers, support for pa containers was phased out by the railways. In the 1970s they began to be widely used for transporting waste.
In 1952 the US army developed the Transporter into the CONtainer EXpress or CONEX box system. The size and capacity of the Conex were about the same as the Transporter,[nb 1] but the system was made modular, by the addition of a smaller, half-size unit of 6' 3" long, 4' 3" wide and 6' 10½" high.[nb 2] CONEXes could be stacked three high, and protected their contents from the elements.
The first major shipment of CONEXes, containing engineering supplies and spare parts, was made 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 almost halved. By the time of the Vietnam War the majority of supplies and materials were shipped by CONEX. By 1965 the US military used some 100,000 Conex boxes, and more than 200,000 in 1967, making this the first worldwide application of intermodal containers. After the US Department of Defense standardized an 8-foot by 8-foot cross section container in multiples of 10-foot lengths for military use, it was rapidly adopted for shipping purposes.
In 1955, former trucking company owner Malcom McLean worked with engineer Keith Tantlinger to develop the modern intermodal container. The challenge was to design a shipping container that could efficiently be loaded onto ships and would hold securely on long sea voyages. The result was a 8 feet (2.4 m) tall by 8 ft (2.4 m) wide box in 10 ft (3.0 m)-long units constructed from 2.5 mm (0.098 in) thick corrugated steel. The design incorporated a twistlock mechanism atop each of the four corners, allowing the container to be easily secured and lifted using cranes. After helping McLean create the successful design, Tantlinger convinced him to give the patented designs to industry; this began international standardization of shipping containers.
The next step was in Europe was after the Second World War. Vessels purpose-built to carry containers were used between UK and Netherlands [18] and also in Denmark in 1951.[28]:31 In the United States, ships began carrying containers in 1951, between Seattle, Washington and Alaska. However, none of these services was particularly successful. First, the containers were rather small, with 52% of them having a volume of less than 3 cubic metres (106 cu ft). Almost all European containers were made of wood and used canvas lids, and they required additional loading[clarification needed] into rail or truck bodies.
The world's first purpose-built container vessel was the Clifford J. Rodgers,[30] built in Montreal in 1955 and owned by the White Pass and Yukon Corporation. 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 and moved by rail, ship, and truck to their consignees without opening. This first intermodal system operated from November 1955 until 1982.
The first truly successful container shipping company dates to April 26, 1956, when American trucking entrepreneur McLean put 58 trailer vans later called containers, aboard a refitted tanker ship, the SS Ideal X, and sailed them from Newark, New Jersey to Houston, Texas. Independently of the events in Canada, McLean had the idea of using large containers that never opened in transit 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 on board the vessel, known as broken stowage. Instead, McLean modified his original concept into loading just the containers, not the chassis, onto the ship; hence the designation "container ship" or "box" ship.
During the first 20 years of containerization, many container sizes and corner fittings were used; there were dozens of incompatible container systems in the United States alone. Among the biggest operators, the Matson Navigation Company had a fleet of 24-foot (7.32 m) containers, while Sea-Land Service, Inc used 35-foot (10.67 m) containers. The standard sizes and fitting and reinforcement norms that now exist evolved out of a series of compromises among international shipping companies, European railroads, US railroads, and US trucking companies. Four important ISO (International Organization for Standardization) recommendations standardized containerization globally.
In the United States, containerization and other advances in shipping were impeded by the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), which was created in 1887 to keep railroads from using monopolist pricing and rate discrimination but fell victim to regulatory capture. By the 1960s, ICC approval was required before any shipper could carry different items in the same vehicle or change rates. The fully integrated systems in the United States today became possible only after the ICC's regulatory oversight was cut back (and abolished in 1995); trucking and rail were deregulated in the 1970s and maritime rates were deregulated in 1984.
Double-stacked rail transport, where containers are stacked two high on railway cars, was introduced in the United States. The concept was developed by Sea-Land and the Southern Pacific railroad. The first standalone double-stack container car (or single-unit 40-ft COFC well car) was delivered in July 1977. The 5-unit well car, the industry standard, appeared for the first time in 1981. Initially, these double-stack railway cars were deployed in regular train service. Ever since American President Lines initiated in 1984 a dedicated double-stack container train service between Los Angeles and Chicago, transport volumes increased rapidly.
Containerization greatly reduced the expense of international trade and increased its speed, especially of consumer goods and commodities. It also dramatically changed the character of port cities worldwide. Prior to highly mechanized container transfers, crews of 20–22 longshoremen would pack individual cargoes into the hold of a ship. After containerization, large crews of longshoremen were no longer necessary at port facilities, and the profession changed drastically.
Meanwhile, the port facilities needed to support containerization changed. One effect was the decline of some ports and the rise of others. At the Port of San Francisco, the former piers used for loading and unloading were no longer required, but there was little room to build the vast holding lots needed for container transport. As a result, the Port of San Francisco virtually ceased to function as a major commercial port, but the neighboring port of Oakland emerged as the second largest on the US West Coast. A similar fate met the relation between the ports of Manhattan and New Jersey. In the United Kingdom, the Port of London and Port of Liverpool declined in importance. Meanwhile, Britain's Port of Felixstowe and Port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands emerged as major ports. In general, inland ports on waterways incapable of deep-draft ship traffic also declined from containerization in favor of seaports. With intermodal containers, the job of sorting and packing containers could be performed far from the point of embarking.
The effects of containerization rapidly spread beyond the shipping industry. Containers were quickly adopted by trucking and rail transport industries for cargo transport not involving sea transport. Manufacturing also evolved to adapt to take advantage of containers. Companies that once sent small consignments began grouping them into containers. Many cargoes are now designed to fit precisely into containers. The reliability of containers also made just in time manufacturing possible as component suppliers could deliver specific components on regular fixed schedules.
As of 2009, approximately 90% of non-bulk cargo worldwide is moved by containers stacked on transport ships; 26% of all container transshipment is carried out in China.[40] For example, in 2009 there were 105,976,701 transshipments in China (both international and coastal, excluding Hong Kong), 21,040,096 in Hong Kong (which is listed separately), and only 34,299,572 in the United States. In 2005, some 18 million containers made over 200 million trips per year. Some ships can carry over 14,500 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU), such as the Emma Mærsk, 396 m (1,299 ft) long, launched in August 2006. It has 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 (1,542 ft) in length and 60 m (197 ft) wide.
However, few initially foresaw the extent of the influence of containerization on the shipping industry. In the 1950s, Harvard University economist Benjamin Chinitz predicted that containerization would benefit New York by allowing it to ship its industrial goods more cheaply to the Southern United States than other areas, but he 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 a more direct influence on the choice of producers and increase the total volume of trade.[36]
The widespread use of ISO standard containers has driven modifications in other freight-moving standards, gradually forcing removable truck bodies or swap bodies into 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; the doors of the containers are usually sealed so that tampering is more evident. Some containers are fitted with electronic monitoring devices and can be remotely monitored for changes in air pressure, which happens when the doors are opened. This reduced the thefts that had long plagued the shipping industry. Recent developments have focused on the use of intelligent logistics optimization to further enhance security.
The 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 1,435 mm (4 ft 8 1⁄2 in) gauge track known as standard gauge, but many countries (such as Russia, India, Finland, and Lithuania) use broader gauges, while many others in Africa and South America use narrower gauges on their networks. The use of container trains in all these countries makes transshipment between different trains of different gauges easier.
Containers have become a popular way to ship private cars and other vehicles overseas using 20- or 40-foot containers. Unlike roll-on/roll-off vehicle shipping, personal effects can be loaded into the container with the vehicle, allowing for easy international relocation.[citation needed]
US domestic standard containers are generally 48 ft (14.63 m) and 53 ft (16.15 m) (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 (6.10 m) (length) × 8 ft (2.44 m) (width) container. As this is an approximate measure, the height of the box is not considered. For instance, the 9 ft 6 in (2.90 m) high cube and the 4 ft 3 in (1.30 m) half height 20 ft (6.10 m) containers are also called one TEU. 48' containers have been phased out over the last ten years in favor of 53' containers.
The maximum gross mass for a 20 ft (6.10 m) dry cargo container is 24,000 kg (53,000 lb), and for a 40 ft (12.19 m) container (including the 9 ft 6 in or 2.90 m high cube) it is 30,480 kg (67,200 lb). Allowing for the tare mass of the container, the maximum payload mass is therefore reduced to approximately 22,000 kg (49,000 lb) for 20 ft (6.10 m), and 27,000 kg (60,000 lb) for 40 ft (12.19 m) containers
The original choice of 8-foot (2.44 m) height for ISO containers was made in part to suit a large proportion of railway tunnels, though some had to be modified. The current standard is eight feet six inches (2.59 m) high. With the arrival of even taller hi-cube containers at nine feet six inches (2.90 m) and double stacking rail cars, further enlargement of the rail loading gauge is proving necessary.
Wiki Text
Prior to the Second World War, many European countries independently developed container systems.
In 1919, Stanisław Rodowicz, an engineer, developed the first draft of the container system in Poland. In 1920, he built a prototype of the biaxial wagon. The Polish-Bolshevik War stopped development of the container system in Poland.
The US Post Office contracted with the New York Central Railroad to move mail via containers in May 1921. In 1930, the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad began shipping containers between Chicago and Milwaukee. However, their efforts ended in the spring of 1931 when the Interstate Commerce Commission wouldn't allow the use of a flat rate for the containers.
In 1926, a regular connection of the luxury passenger train from London to Paris, Golden Arrow/Fleche d'Or, by Southern Railway and French Northern Railway, began. For transport of passengers' baggage four containers were used. These containers were loaded in London or Paris and carried to ports, Dover or Calais, on flat cars in the UK and "CIWL Pullman Golden Arrow Fourgon of CIWL" in France. At the Second World Motor Transport Congress in Rome, September 1928, Italian senator Silvio Crespi proposed the use of containers for road and railway transport systems, using collaboration rather than competition. This would be done under the auspices of an international organ similar to the Sleeping Car Company, which provided international carriage of passengers in sleeping wagons. In 1928 Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) started regular container service in the northeast United States. After the Wall Street Crash of 1929 in New York and the subsequent Great Depression, many countries were without any means of transport for cargo. The railroads were sought as a possibility to transport cargo, and there was an opportunity to bring containers into broader use. Under auspices of the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris in Venice on September 30, 1931, on one of the platforms of the Maritime Station (Mole di Ponente), practical tests were done to assess the best construction for European containers as part of an international competition.
In the same year, 1931, in USA Benjamin Franklin Fitch designed the two largest and heaviest containers in existence anywhere at the time. One measured 17'6" by 8'0" by 8'0" with a capacity of 30,000 pounds in 890 cubic feet, and a second measured 20'0" by 8'0" by 8'0", with a capacity of 50,000 pounds in 1,000 cubic feet.
In November 1932 in Enola the first container terminal in the world was opened by PRR Pennsylvania RailRoad company.[10] The Fitch hooking system was used for reloading of the containers.
The development of containerization was created in Europe and the US as a way to revitalize rail companies after the Wall Street Crash of 1929, which had caused economic collapse and reduction in use of all modes of transport.
In 1933 in Europe under the auspices of the International Chamber of Commerce the International Container Bureau (French: Bureau International des Conteneurs, B.I.C.) was established. In June 1933, the B.I.C. decided on obligatory parameters for containers used in international traffic. Containers handled by means of lifting gear, such as cranes, overhead conveyors, etc. for traveling elevators (group I containers), constructed after July 1, 1933. Obligatory Regulations.
From 1926 to 1947 in the United States, 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 "piggyback" service (transporting highway freight trailers on flatcars) limited to their own railroads. The Chicago Great Western Railway filed a US federal patent in 1938 on their method of securing each trailer to a flatcar using chains and turnbuckles. Other components included wheel chocks and ramps for loading and unloading the trailers from the flatcars. By 1953, the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy, the Chicago and Eastern Illinois, and the Southern Pacific railroads had joined the innovation. Most of the railcars used were surplus flatcars equipped with new decks. By 1955, an additional 25 railroads had begun some form of piggyback trailer service.
In April 1951, at Zürich Tiefenbrunnen railway station, the Swiss Museum of Transport and Bureau International des Containers (BIC) held demonstrations of container systems, with the aim of selecting the best solution for Western Europe. Present were representatives from France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Great Britain, Italy and the United States. The system chosen for Western Europe was based on the Netherlands' system for consumer goods and waste transportation called Laadkisten (literally, "loading bins"), in use since 1934. This system used roller containers that were moved by rail, truck and ship, in various configurations up to a capacity of 5,500 kg (12,100 lb), and up to 3.1 x 2.3 x 2 metres in size. This became the first post World War II European railway standard UIC 590, known as "pa-Behälter." It was implemented in the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, West Germany, Switzerland, Sweden and Denmark.[18] With the popularization of the larger ISO containers, support for pa containers was phased out by the railways. In the 1970s they began to be widely used for transporting waste.
In 1952 the US army developed the Transporter into the CONtainer EXpress or CONEX box system. The size and capacity of the Conex were about the same as the Transporter,[nb 1] but the system was made modular, by the addition of a smaller, half-size unit of 6' 3" long, 4' 3" wide and 6' 10½" high.[nb 2] CONEXes could be stacked three high, and protected their contents from the elements.
The first major shipment of CONEXes, containing engineering supplies and spare parts, was made 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 almost halved. By the time of the Vietnam War the majority of supplies and materials were shipped by CONEX. By 1965 the US military used some 100,000 Conex boxes, and more than 200,000 in 1967, making this the first worldwide application of intermodal containers. After the US Department of Defense standardized an 8-foot by 8-foot cross section container in multiples of 10-foot lengths for military use, it was rapidly adopted for shipping purposes.
In 1955, former trucking company owner Malcom McLean worked with engineer Keith Tantlinger to develop the modern intermodal container. The challenge was to design a shipping container that could efficiently be loaded onto ships and would hold securely on long sea voyages. The result was a 8 feet (2.4 m) tall by 8 ft (2.4 m) wide box in 10 ft (3.0 m)-long units constructed from 2.5 mm (0.098 in) thick corrugated steel. The design incorporated a twistlock mechanism atop each of the four corners, allowing the container to be easily secured and lifted using cranes. After helping McLean create the successful design, Tantlinger convinced him to give the patented designs to industry; this began international standardization of shipping containers.
The next step was in Europe was after the Second World War. Vessels purpose-built to carry containers were used between UK and Netherlands [18] and also in Denmark in 1951.[28]:31 In the United States, ships began carrying containers in 1951, between Seattle, Washington and Alaska. However, none of these services was particularly successful. First, the containers were rather small, with 52% of them having a volume of less than 3 cubic metres (106 cu ft). Almost all European containers were made of wood and used canvas lids, and they required additional loading[clarification needed] into rail or truck bodies.
The world's first purpose-built container vessel was the Clifford J. Rodgers,[30] built in Montreal in 1955 and owned by the White Pass and Yukon Corporation. 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 and moved by rail, ship, and truck to their consignees without opening. This first intermodal system operated from November 1955 until 1982.
The first truly successful container shipping company dates to April 26, 1956, when American trucking entrepreneur McLean put 58 trailer vans later called containers, aboard a refitted tanker ship, the SS Ideal X, and sailed them from Newark, New Jersey to Houston, Texas. Independently of the events in Canada, McLean had the idea of using large containers that never opened in transit 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 on board the vessel, known as broken stowage. Instead, McLean modified his original concept into loading just the containers, not the chassis, onto the ship; hence the designation "container ship" or "box" ship.
During the first 20 years of containerization, many container sizes and corner fittings were used; there were dozens of incompatible container systems in the United States alone. Among the biggest operators, the Matson Navigation Company had a fleet of 24-foot (7.32 m) containers, while Sea-Land Service, Inc used 35-foot (10.67 m) containers. The standard sizes and fitting and reinforcement norms that now exist evolved out of a series of compromises among international shipping companies, European railroads, US railroads, and US trucking companies. Four important ISO (International Organization for Standardization) recommendations standardized containerization globally.
In the United States, containerization and other advances in shipping were impeded by the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), which was created in 1887 to keep railroads from using monopolist pricing and rate discrimination but fell victim to regulatory capture. By the 1960s, ICC approval was required before any shipper could carry different items in the same vehicle or change rates. The fully integrated systems in the United States today became possible only after the ICC's regulatory oversight was cut back (and abolished in 1995); trucking and rail were deregulated in the 1970s and maritime rates were deregulated in 1984.
Double-stacked rail transport, where containers are stacked two high on railway cars, was introduced in the United States. The concept was developed by Sea-Land and the Southern Pacific railroad. The first standalone double-stack container car (or single-unit 40-ft COFC well car) was delivered in July 1977. The 5-unit well car, the industry standard, appeared for the first time in 1981. Initially, these double-stack railway cars were deployed in regular train service. Ever since American President Lines initiated in 1984 a dedicated double-stack container train service between Los Angeles and Chicago, transport volumes increased rapidly.
Containerization greatly reduced the expense of international trade and increased its speed, especially of consumer goods and commodities. It also dramatically changed the character of port cities worldwide. Prior to highly mechanized container transfers, crews of 20–22 longshoremen would pack individual cargoes into the hold of a ship. After containerization, large crews of longshoremen were no longer necessary at port facilities, and the profession changed drastically.
Meanwhile, the port facilities needed to support containerization changed. One effect was the decline of some ports and the rise of others. At the Port of San Francisco, the former piers used for loading and unloading were no longer required, but there was little room to build the vast holding lots needed for container transport. As a result, the Port of San Francisco virtually ceased to function as a major commercial port, but the neighboring port of Oakland emerged as the second largest on the US West Coast. A similar fate met the relation between the ports of Manhattan and New Jersey. In the United Kingdom, the Port of London and Port of Liverpool declined in importance. Meanwhile, Britain's Port of Felixstowe and Port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands emerged as major ports. In general, inland ports on waterways incapable of deep-draft ship traffic also declined from containerization in favor of seaports. With intermodal containers, the job of sorting and packing containers could be performed far from the point of embarking.
The effects of containerization rapidly spread beyond the shipping industry. Containers were quickly adopted by trucking and rail transport industries for cargo transport not involving sea transport. Manufacturing also evolved to adapt to take advantage of containers. Companies that once sent small consignments began grouping them into containers. Many cargoes are now designed to fit precisely into containers. The reliability of containers also made just in time manufacturing possible as component suppliers could deliver specific components on regular fixed schedules.
As of 2009, approximately 90% of non-bulk cargo worldwide is moved by containers stacked on transport ships; 26% of all container transshipment is carried out in China.[40] For example, in 2009 there were 105,976,701 transshipments in China (both international and coastal, excluding Hong Kong), 21,040,096 in Hong Kong (which is listed separately), and only 34,299,572 in the United States. In 2005, some 18 million containers made over 200 million trips per year. Some ships can carry over 14,500 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU), such as the Emma Mærsk, 396 m (1,299 ft) long, launched in August 2006. It has 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 (1,542 ft) in length and 60 m (197 ft) wide.
However, few initially foresaw the extent of the influence of containerization on the shipping industry. In the 1950s, Harvard University economist Benjamin Chinitz predicted that containerization would benefit New York by allowing it to ship its industrial goods more cheaply to the Southern United States than other areas, but he 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 a more direct influence on the choice of producers and increase the total volume of trade.[36]
The widespread use of ISO standard containers has driven modifications in other freight-moving standards, gradually forcing removable truck bodies or swap bodies into 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; the doors of the containers are usually sealed so that tampering is more evident. Some containers are fitted with electronic monitoring devices and can be remotely monitored for changes in air pressure, which happens when the doors are opened. This reduced the thefts that had long plagued the shipping industry. Recent developments have focused on the use of intelligent logistics optimization to further enhance security.
The 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 1,435 mm (4 ft 8 1⁄2 in) gauge track known as standard gauge, but many countries (such as Russia, India, Finland, and Lithuania) use broader gauges, while many others in Africa and South America use narrower gauges on their networks. The use of container trains in all these countries makes transshipment between different trains of different gauges easier.
Containers have become a popular way to ship private cars and other vehicles overseas using 20- or 40-foot containers. Unlike roll-on/roll-off vehicle shipping, personal effects can be loaded into the container with the vehicle, allowing for easy international relocation.[citation needed]
US domestic standard containers are generally 48 ft (14.63 m) and 53 ft (16.15 m) (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 (6.10 m) (length) × 8 ft (2.44 m) (width) container. As this is an approximate measure, the height of the box is not considered. For instance, the 9 ft 6 in (2.90 m) high cube and the 4 ft 3 in (1.30 m) half height 20 ft (6.10 m) containers are also called one TEU. 48' containers have been phased out over the last ten years in favor of 53' containers.
The maximum gross mass for a 20 ft (6.10 m) dry cargo container is 24,000 kg (53,000 lb), and for a 40 ft (12.19 m) container (including the 9 ft 6 in or 2.90 m high cube) it is 30,480 kg (67,200 lb). Allowing for the tare mass of the container, the maximum payload mass is therefore reduced to approximately 22,000 kg (49,000 lb) for 20 ft (6.10 m), and 27,000 kg (60,000 lb) for 40 ft (12.19 m) containers
The original choice of 8-foot (2.44 m) height for ISO containers was made in part to suit a large proportion of railway tunnels, though some had to be modified. The current standard is eight feet six inches (2.59 m) high. With the arrival of even taller hi-cube containers at nine feet six inches (2.90 m) and double stacking rail cars, further enlargement of the rail loading gauge is proving necessary.