Cargo airships could be big
Post-1973 globalization has more than tripled the mass of seaborne trade and brought major shifts in its composition.[76] While in 1973 tanker traffic (dominated by crude oil and refined products) accounted for more than half of the transported total, in 2018 goods amounted to about 70 percent, a shift reflecting not only the rise of Asia—and, abov
... See moreVaclav Smil • How the World Really Works: The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We're Going
Malcom McLean’s fundamental insight, commonplace today but quite radical in the 1950s, was that the shipping industry’s business was moving cargo, not sailing ships. That insight led him to a concept of containerization quite different from anything that had come before. McLean understood that reducing the cost of shipping goods required not just a
... See moreMarc Levinson • The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger - Second Edition with a new chapter by the author
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
... See moreMarc Levinson • The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger - Second Edition with a new chapter by the author
“Any change in technology,” the economist Joel Mokyr observed, “leads almost inevitably to an improvement in the welfare of some and to a deterioration in that of others.” That was as true of the container as of other technologies, but on an international scale. Containerization did not create geographical disadvantage, but it has arguably made it
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