Container transport
The transport of cargo requires reloading at the start and destination as well as land and / or sea transport. These subtasks require various optimizations.
Transport by road, rail and sea as well as in the air requires special solutions, which have led to different types of transport containers or containers .
history
Early developments
The invention of container transport and later of the modern container came in numerous smaller steps. Early developments can be traced back to the 1920s. The first company to successfully implement an intermodal system was the US shipping company Seatrain Lines , which from 1929 transported railway wagons on specially developed frames on corresponding special ships.
During the Second World War
During the Second World War , efforts were made in various countries to transport military supplies in large, container-like transport boxes. Particularly noteworthy is the American army, in which such systems have also been implemented on a larger scale.
In the course of post-war planning for a European broad-gauge railway, Oberreichsbahnrat Dr. Günther Wiens from the Reichsbahn-Zentralamt in Berlin and Reichsbahnrat Karl Bauer from the Reichsbahnbau-Direktion Munich proposed on August 31, 1942 to transport large containers that could be removed from crane systems onto freight wagons in the future. From September 1942, the technical drawings for eight and twelve-axle "container wagons" were created in the Reichsbahn Central Office . The containers on the freight wagons were standardized by the ton in 5, 10, 15, 20 and 30 t. The 30-t container corresponds to today's standard of 40-foot containers .
First post-war developments
In the spring of 1949 the first container transport of the British shipping company Atlantic Steam Navigation Company , which was still improvised with former armored landing ships, began . On their liner service across the Irish Sea, this implemented an idea of Army Transport Officer John Gordon Woolam and later led to the construction of the first RoRo ships .
After the Second World War, the Deutsche Bundespost introduced the "Weber container" or the "Weber System" from 1949 . These were standardized parcel containers for road and rail vehicles. The truck types used for this purpose were primarily the Mercedes-Benz L 3500 and L 6600 as well as Büssing LU 77 and Magirus-Deutz S 3000 . From 1960 onwards, the containers that were loaded with pallet trucks were provided with rollers.
The first intermodal transport chain over land and sea to be implemented according to modern standards was introduced by the White Pass and Yukon Railway , which opened a door-to-door container line service from 1955 with the first specially developed container ship, the Clifford J. Rogers .
Breakthrough of the ISO container
- → Main article: ISO container
The American Malcom P. McLean is considered to be the inventor of the modern container, as he first used large containers for transport by truck and ship in 1956. In order to save the usual reloading in the port, as a young haulier he is said to have had the idea in 1937 to first load entire trucks onto ships, later only the trailers with their loaded containers, and finally only the containers themselves. His merit is above all to have made the actual breakthrough to the modern ISO container.
McLean founded the shipping company Sea-Land Corporation Ltd. (since 2006 Maersk - Sealand Line) and had old oil tankers converted so that additional containers could be loaded on deck. The converted Ideal X made its first voyage on April 26, 1956 with 58 containers from Newark (New Jersey) to Houston (Texas). The entrepreneur McLean had his breakthrough with supplying the US military with cargo during the Vietnam War. However, it was ten years before a ship with containers, the Fairland , docked in a European port (Rotterdam) on May 2, 1966 ; four days later the ship reached Bremen.
See also
Individual evidence
- ^ Anton Joachimsthaler : Hitler's broad gauge railway. Eisenbahn-Kurier Verlag, Freiburg i. Br. 1981, pp. 255f.
- ↑ model information ( Memento of 6 January 2009 at the Internet Archive ) bahnpost.net,