The Prepared is now Scope of Work

These two unrelated developments—the rise of New York, the neglect of Tampa and Mobile—revealed the economics that would affect seaports as container shipping grew. For ports, capturing container traffic was going to be expensive, requiring investments out of all proportion to what had come before. For ship lines, the days when vessels meandered al

move it from the facility where it’s made to the warehouse where it’s stored (like the place I visited in Tanzania) and eventually the farm where it’s used, we load…

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Malcom McLean’s real contribution to the development of containerization, in my view, had to do not with a metal box or a ship, but with a managerial insight. McLean understood that transport companies’ true business was moving freight rather than operating ships or trains. That understanding helped his version of containerization succeed where so

The solution to the high cost of freight handling was obvious: instead of loading, unloading, shifting, and reloading thousands of loose items, why not put the freight into big boxes and just move the boxes? The concept of shipping freight in large boxes had been around for decades. The British and French railways tried wooden containers to move ho