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Television around  the globe featured an astonishing sight last March 23. The Ever Given, a gigantic cargo ship — 1312 feet long, hauling 20,124 multi-colored  containers  stacked  ten stories high — lay lodged and straddled across the Suez Canal. She stayed stuck for six long days. Her distress, her blockade of international trade and the efforts of men and  tugboats  struggling  to dislodge her, produced  intense  interest.

As late as the 1950s, there were no containers  of the type aboard  the Ever Given nor were there cargo  ships that even approached the vessel’s size.  Invention of the modern shipping container is recognized as one of 20th century’s most consequential innovations. It led to globalization, to inter-connected economies and in many countries to higher standards of living. “The Box,” as economist Marc Levison labeled it, “made the world smaller and the world economy bigger.”

One man — a trucker not a shipper — is due much of the credit. Malcolm MacLean’s  push for overhaul on  the  waterfronts  is an intriguing saga of economic change and its unavoidable obstacles.

First, some history. From antiquity into modern times, sailing vessels were loaded and unloaded by hand. Droves of longshoremen clambered above deck and deep in the hold, lowering, stowing and securing bales, bags, cartons, boxes, barrels and kegs; where the cargo became subject to repetitious handling, loss in transit and theft. Transporting goods overseas was an expensive,  labor-intensive enterprise. By 1956 shipping costs had risen to $5.86 per ton ($420.00 in today’s money) and posed a major handicap. For example, world  merchandise  trade was less than 20 percent of  world gross domestic product. Today it’s about 50 percent.

Meanwhile, seaports were snarled and congested. Heavy trucks, including those of McLean Trucking, endured long and costly waits for loading and unloading. Manufacturers, suppliers and warehousers found it necessary to locate as close to harbors and wharfs as possible, creating still more congestion. Up to 75 percent of shipping costs were incurred while the ship was in port.

In 1953, Malcolm McLean set out to find a  better method for handling overseas cargo.  A native of North Carolina and a high school graduate, he was known as a hard-driving, savvy executive, always alert for greater efficiency and for cutting costs. Beginning with one truck in 1935, he had built McLean Trucking to a fleet of 617 by 1954.

McLean’s  challenge was to shorten the cargo loading time on Pan-Atlantic ships. He first tried lifting the entire heavy truck on board. This proved unworkable. He next sought a way for loading only the truck’s trailer. That, too, failed to work. More plausible was his concept for a removable cargo box, stackable atop one another and easily swapped among trucks, trains and ships. He identified an engineer with experience designing aluminum containers, those that an overhead crane could lift from trucks to ships. That problem largely solved, he then purchased surplus World War II tankers and hired them retrofitted.

Mclean’s SS Ideal-X sailed April 26, 1956 from New Jersey bound for Houston, filled with 58 containers, each loaded by crane every seven minutes. At end of the successful voyage, he calculated the costs of loading Ideal-X at 15.8 cents per ton, compared to loading loose cargo on a medium-sized cargo ship of $5.83 cents per ton. The Age of the Shipping Container had  thus arrived.

It did not bloom overnight. As with most breakthrough innovation, the container’s full utilization faced high hurdles. A maze of difficult federal shipping regulations  demanded tedious resolution. Longshoremen unions, foreseeing the loss of jobs on the waterfront, mounted strong opposition. Ships required drastic alteration in design. Ports needed rebuilding with towering cranes, each weighing a thousand tons, and capable of  transporting  containers weighing upwards of 30 tons.    

It was not until 1970 that the modern shipping container was standardized and agreed upon.  It is of corrugated  metal construction, eight feet wide, eight and a half feet tall, and is either 20 or 40 feet long. A single container can hold 5,000 individual boxes. Nothing in the container’s construction is engaging. Its entire uniqueness turns upon its use and deployment.

In that respect it has revolutionized transport and trade in the second half of the 20th century. At any given time, approximately 6,000 container ships are at sea. Collectively,  they transport each year a quarter billion containers filled with goods of every description.

Supply chains have lengthened. At a result, manufacturers can now locate in Vietnam, Thailand or China and still gain a foothold  in the global economy.  All at minimal costs. As Levinson puts it, “Transportation has become so efficient that for many purposes freight costs do not much affect transportation decisions.”

Malcom McLean, of course, saw his invention’s potential and seized it. Using his trucking enterprises as a springboard, he gained control of Sea-Land Service, offering container services between New York and Rotterdam. By end of the 1960s, Sea-Land owned 36 container ships with access to over 30 port cities. By 1982 Mclean made the Forbes 400 Richest American list with a net worth of  $400 million.

He died of natural causes at his home in New Yor City on May 25, 2001, age 87. Wrote The Baltimore Sun: “He ranks next to Robert Fulton as the greatest revolutionary in the history of maritime trade.”

• Retired attorney Jim Thomas lives in Atlanta. He is a former Pierce County resident and can be contacted at jmtlawyerspeak@yahoo.com.

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