Containerization
Containerization is a system of intermodal freight transport using intermodal containers. Containerization, also referred as container stuffing or container loading, is the process of unitization of cargoes in exports. Containerization is the predominant form of unitization of export cargoes today, as opposed to other systems such as the barge system or palletization. The containers have standardized dimensions. They can be loaded and unloaded, stacked, transported efficiently over long distances, and transferred from one mode of transport to another—container ships, rail transport flatcars, and semi-trailer trucks—without being opened. The handling system is mechanized so that all handling is done with cranes and special forklift trucks. All containers are numbered and tracked using computerized systems.
Containerization originated several centuries ago but was not well developed or widely applied until after World War II, when it dramatically reduced the costs of transport, supported the post-war boom in international trade, and was a major element in globalization. Containerization eliminated manual sorting of most shipments and the need for dock front warehouses, while displacing many thousands of dock workers who formerly simply handled break bulk cargo. Containerization reduced congestion in ports, significantly shortened shipping time, and reduced losses from damage and theft.
Containers can be made from a wide range of materials such as steel, fibre-reinforced polymer, aluminum or a combination. Containers made from weathering steel are used to minimize maintenance needs.
Origin
Before containerization, goods were usually handled manually as break bulk cargo. Typically, goods would be loaded onto a vehicle from the factory and taken to a port warehouse where they would be offloaded and stored awaiting the next vessel. When the vessel arrived, they would be moved to the side of the ship along with other cargo to be lowered or carried into the hold and packed by dock workers. The ship might call at several other ports before off-loading a given consignment of cargo. Each port visit would delay the delivery of other cargo. Delivered cargo might then have been offloaded into another warehouse before being picked up and delivered to its destination. Multiple handling and delays made transport costly, time-consuming and unreliable.Containerization has its origins in early coal mining regions in England beginning in the late 18th century. In 1766 James Brindley designed the "starvationer" box boat with ten wooden containers, to transport coal from Worsley Delph to Manchester by Bridgewater Canal. In 1795, Benjamin Outram opened the Little Eaton Gangway, upon which coal was carried in wagons built at his Butterley Ironwork. The horse-drawn wheeled wagons on the gangway took the form of containers, which, loaded with coal, could be transshipped from canal barges on the Derby Canal, which Outram had also promoted.
By the 1830s, railroads were carrying containers that could be transferred to other modes of transport. The Liverpool and Manchester Railway in the UK was one of these, making use of "simple rectangular timber boxes" to convey coal from Lancashire collieries to Liverpool, where a crane transferred them to horse-drawn carriages. Originally used for moving coal on and off barges, "loose boxes" were used to containerize coal from the late 1780s, at 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.
Twentieth century
On 17 May 1917, Louisville, Kentucky, native Benjamin Franklin "B. F." Fitch launched commercial use of "demountable bodies" in Cincinnati, Ohio, which he had designed as transferable containers. In 1919, his system was extended to over 200 containers serving 21 railway stations with 14 freight trucks.In 1919, engineer Stanisław Rodowicz 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 U.S. 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. Their efforts ended in the spring of 1931 when the Interstate Commerce Commission disallowed 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 started regular container service in the northeast U.S. After the Wall Street crash of 1929 in New York and the subsequent Great Depression, many countries were without any means to transport cargo. The railroads were sought as a possibility to transport cargo, and there was an opportunity to bring containers into broader use. In February 1931 the first container ship was launched. It was called the Autocarrier, owned by Southern Railway UK. It had 21 slots for containers of Southern Railway. 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, practical tests assessed the best construction for European containers as part of an international competition.
In 1931, in the U.S., B. F. Fitch designed the two largest and heaviest containers in existence. One measured by by with a capacity of in, and a second measured by by, with a capacity of in.
In November 1932, in Enola, Pennsylvania, the first container terminal in the world was opened by the Pennsylvania Railroad. The Fitch hooking system was used for reloading of the containers.
The development of containerization was created in Europe and the U.S. 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 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, constructed after July 1, 1933. Obligatory Regulations:
- Clause 1. Containers are, as regards form, either of the closed or the open type, and, as regards capacity, either of the heavy or the light type.
- Clause 2. The loading capacity of containers must be such that their total weight is: for containers of the heavy type; for containers of the light type; a tolerance of 5 percent excess on the total weight is allowable under the same conditions as for wagon loads.
From 1926 to 1947 in the U.S., 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 limited to their own railroads. The Chicago Great Western Railway filed a U.S. patent in 1938 on their method of securing trailers to a flatcars 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 rail cars used were surplus flatcars equipped with new decks. By 1955, an additional 25 railroads had begun some form of piggyback trailer service.
World War II
During World War II, the Australian Army used containers to more easily deal with various breaks of gauge in the railroads. These non-stackable containers were about the size of the later 20-foot ISO container and perhaps made mainly of wood.During the same time, the United States Army started to combine items of uniform size, lashing them onto a pallet, unitizing cargo to speed the loading and unloading of transport ships. In 1947 the Transportation Corps developed the Transporter, a rigid, corrugated steel container with a carrying capacity, for shipping household goods of officers in the field. It was long,, and high, with double doors on one end, mounted on skids, and had lifting rings on the top four corners. 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 convinced the army that steel containers were needed.
Mid-twentieth century
In April 1951, at Zürich Tiefenbrunnen railway station, the Swiss Museum of Transport and Bureau International des Containers 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, 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, and up to 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.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 U.S. Army developed the Transporter into the CONtainer EXpress or CONEX box system. The size and capacity of the CONEXes were about the same as the Transporter, but the system was made modular, by the addition of a smaller, half-size unit of long, wide and high. 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. Transit times were almost halved. By the time of the Vietnam War the majority of supplies and materials were shipped by CONEX. By 1965 the U.S. 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 cross section container in multiples of 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. All the containerization pioneers who came before McLean had thought in terms of optimizing particular modes of transport. McLean's "fundamental insight" which made the intermodal container possible was that the core business of the shipping industry "was moving cargo, not sailing ships". He visualized and helped to bring about a world reoriented around that insight, which required not just standardization of the metal containers themselves, but drastic changes to every aspect of cargo handling.
In 1955, McLean and Tantlinger's immediate challenge was to design a shipping container that could efficiently be loaded onto ships and would hold securely on sea voyages. The result was an by box in units constructed from 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. Several years later, as a Fruehauf executive, Tantlinger went back to McLean and convinced him to relinquish control of their design to help stimulate the container revolution. On January 29, 1963, McLean's company SeaLand released its patent rights, so that Tantlinger's inventions could become "the basis for a standard corner fitting and twist lock". Tantlinger was deeply involved in the debates and negotiations which in back-to-back votes in September 1965 led to the adoption of a modified version of the Sea-Land design as the American and then the international standard for corner fittings for shipping containers. This began international standardization of shipping containers.