The Ramifications of Containerization

Abstract

Once the feasibility of the container movement had been proven by Malcom McLean’s success in the U. S. coastwise trade, shipowners in the international services began to look with interest on the new method. For many reasons, including the entirely pragmatic one that there was a shortage of the proper containers, it was not until early 1966 that any regular transportation of containerized cargo was offered to shippers on the busy North Atlantic route. In February, Moore-McCormack Lines began to dispatch containers in their fast break-bulk ships, emphasizing as an inducement to exporters and importers that these boxes were the last to be loaded aboard and the first to be taken out of the ship, thereby saving a considerable amount of time over and above the reduction in conventional handling. The United States Lines followed suit the next month by assigning four break-bulk ships to carry containers. Fully cellularized containerships transporting all cargo in the big boxes were introduced to the North Atlantic by McLean’s Sea-Land Service in late April of the same year, when the Fairland and three sister ships were placed on berth to operate between Baltimore (Maryland) and Port Newark (New Jersey) in the United States and Rotterdam, Grangemouth, and Bremer- haven/Bremen in Western Europe.