The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger

The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger | Marc Levinson | A Box is more than a box.

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The Box: How the S...

	The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger Marc Levinson Princeton University Press, 2008 - 400 pages average customer review:based on 28 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

In April 1956, a refitted oil tanker carried fifty-eight shipping containers from Newark to Houston. From that modest beginning, container shipping developed into a huge industry that made the boom in global trade possible. The Box tells the dramatic story of the container's creation, the decade of struggle before it was widely adopted, and the sweeping economic consequences of the sharp fall in transportation costs that containerization brought about.

Published on the fiftieth anniversary of the first container voyage, this is the first comprehensive history of the shipping container. It recounts how the drive and imagination of an iconoclastic entrepreneur, Malcom McLean, turned containerization from an impractical idea into a massive industry that slashed the cost of transporting goods around the world and made the boom in global trade possible.

But the container didn't just happen. Its adoption required huge sums of money, both from private investors and from ports that aspired to be on the leading edge of a new technology. It required years of high-stakes bargaining with two of the titans of organized labor, Harry Bridges and Teddy Gleason, as well as delicate negotiations on standards that made it possible for almost any container to travel on any truck or train or ship. Ultimately, it took McLean's success in supplying U.S. forces in Vietnam to persuade the world of the container's potential.

Drawing on previously neglected sources, economist Marc Levinson shows how the container transformed economic geography, devastating traditional ports such as New York and London and fueling the growth of previously obscure ones, such as Oakland. By making shipping so cheap that industry could locate factories far from its customers, the container paved the way for Asia to become the world's workshop and brought consumers a previously unimaginable variety of low-cost products from around the globe.

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Great book for explaining the modern global economy

An interesting historic account of the rise of containerized shipping, whose success has completely changed the modern world economy. Nothing will ever be the same again as long as container ships are here.

A Box is more than a box.

A good review of the transportation & shipping industry.
A little tedious at times but the points are well made.
I would like to have had a side bar on the boxes used in the
air cargo network to round out the topic.

Decent enough book, but why avoid the details?

I blame a lack of technical, scientific, and mathematical education in the United States. Okay, seriously, this seems to be a general problem with most general-audience books. An absolute inability or unwillingness (not sure which it is) to have any technical details, or anything technical at all, present. Figures? Illustrations? Numbers? Nope. Really, people can cope. And those who can't will just skip past while those who can feel relief at not being talked down to again.

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No where near technical enough

Like many jounalists' stories this is set around a particular factor. In this case an entrepeneur who no doubt had a big role to play.

But there were lots of other factors which are not given much play and others bearly alluded to. Also, not even one drawing of a container or its fittings!

So OK as an intro but by no means a comprehensive history.

How shipping containers shortened the life span of petrochemical-civilization

Mark Levinson has written a book that shows how containers made global trade possible. In the preface of the paperback edition, he notes other aspects of containerization he became aware of later, such as the potential for containers to harbor atomic weapons, how they've become homes, and so on.

To me, what Levinson leaves out is how this global distribution system will make it very difficult to go back to local production as energy declines. He also doesn't mention that containerization was the fastest way yet for capitalism to loot the planet and strip Mother Earth down to her hard dry skin.

In 2005, roughly 18 million containers worldwide made over 200 million trips (wikipedia). Containers come in many sizes, an average one is 40 feet long, 8 feet wide, and 8 feet high, the size of three 10 by 10 foot bedrooms. There are 1,300 foot-long ships now that can carry 7,250 of them.

It's mind boggling to think about how different the world is now. My grandparents ate what was in season, an orange was a precious Christmas gift. Today, the Japanese are eating Wyoming beef and we're driving Japanese cars.

Before containers were used to move cargo, port cities had long piers where boxes and bales were moved by sweat and muscle onto ships. Longshoremen lived within two miles of the docks in cheap housing. Now the piers are gone and the only sweat comes from yuppies on treadmills in luxury apartments.

The cost of moving products by any means, whether truck, train, or ship, was often so high most goods were made locally. Factories were often located near ports to shorten the distance of getting products to ships.

The idea of containerization was around for a long time, and a few companies experimented with doing this and failed for various reasons. It took Malcolm McLean, the founder of Sea-Land, and standardization, to make containerization really take off.

The cost of shipping goods, whether the container was on land or water, dropped so drastically, that suddenly it made more economic sense for a factory to be located wherever land, labor, and electricity were inexpensive. Millions of high-paying factory jobs were lost as containerization made it possible for factories to move overseas.

Also very important was being able to get goods cheaply to a container port. The price of labor in Africa might even be less than China, but Africa has few container ports, so factories don't move there.

Containerization was a major revolution - instead of endless loading and unloading each box from trucks, to trains, to ships, moving cargo became so much simpler and cheaper that the cost to move cargo was no longer a major consideration. This made longer supply chains became possible. The example Levinson gives in his book is how Barbie dolls are manufactured. America ships China the cotton, molds, and pigments used to make Barbie, Japan the nylon hair, and Taiwan the plastic in her body. This allows Japan to get really, really good at nylon hair, and make it far cheaper.

The history of container ships contains a valuable lesson about why capitalism has hastened the collapse of petro-civilization. After the energy crises of the '70s, U. S. Lines built slow, energy efficient ships. Fuel had gone from 25% of operating costs in 1972 to 50% in 1975. If oil had gone to $50 per barrel as expected, U. S. Lines would have had the most profitable shipping line plying the ocean. But oil plunged to $14 a barrel, and the bankruptcy was the largest in history. Capitalism can only see profit this microsecond; it has no plans for the future.

Wham! Imagine what will happen when the energy crisis strikes forever, and only the military and politically connected have gasoline. It's great that container ships carry cargo efficiently, and perhaps can be towed by giant kites (experiments are underway). But what can be shipped with inland factories scattered across several continents? Most containers carry intermediate parts, not complete Barbies -- how will all the bits and pieces of Barbie find each other?

With limited energy, it will be hard to go back in time, to rebuild long docks, local factories, and all the other sail-based infrastructure. The Railroad tracks feeding ships and inland regions have been ripped out, leaving the majority of inland transport to highly inefficient gas-guzzling trucks that run on rough roads and rusting bridges. Humpty Dumpty didn't just fall off the wall, where we could have glued him back, he's been blown up, his ashes scattered around the world, and there's not enough time or energy to put him back together again.

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