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Interview: Ryan Petersen, founder and CEO of Flexport
The railroads were in the happy situation of being able to pass their lower costs on to customers and still earn better profits than they did carrying freight the traditional way, in boxcars. Freight forwarders took advantage of the rate difference, arranging to consolidate smaller shipments into full carloads, for which they could demand lower rai
... 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
Growing intercontinental trade required new modes of specialized shipping. Bulk carriers with large compartments and massive watertight hatches were designed to transport coal, grain, ores, cement, and fertilizer, and they could be rapidly loaded and unloaded. But the greatest shipping innovation came in 1957, when a North Carolina trucker Malcolm
... See moreVaclav Smil • How the World Really Works: The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We're Going
What both transportation companies and shippers were slowly coming to grasp was that simply carrying ocean freight in big metal boxes was not a viable business. Yes, it produced some savings: cranes, boxes, chassis, and containerships eliminated much of the cost of loading and unloading vessels at the dock. Shippers, however, cared not about loadin
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