Cargo airships could be big

The expense of building and equipping these second-generation containerships staggered even the largest ship lines. Between 1967 and the end of 1972, a consultant would later calculate, the total cost of containerization around the world would come to nearly $10 billion—an amount close to $60 billion in 2015 dollars. Individual European ship lines

Whether containerships and containerports have reached their maximum efficient size, or even larger and costlier ships and ports could give rise to yet more economies of scale, making it still cheaper and easier to move goods around the globe, is a question of considerable consequence for the world economy.8

Four years later, it got out of the shipping business altogether and spun off Sea-Land as an independent company. As R. J. Reynolds’s new management explained to investment analysts, “investors who might be interested in owning RJR stock were not the type who ordinarily would be interested in a capital-intensive, cyclical transportation company.”35

The emerging economics of container shipping meant that the laggards faced potentially serious consequences. The newly built containerships coming on the scene in the late 1960s carried far more cargo than the vessels they supplanted; even if the total amount of cargo grew, fewer voyages would be required. Shipowners wanted to keep their ships unde