Container transport

Altenwerder container terminal in the port of Hamburg

As container transport refers to a special type of container transport , intermodal on the stackable metal containers (such as air freight containers , ISO containers based, etc.). These containers are manufactured according to standardized dimensions and can be efficiently loaded and unloaded, stacked, transported and reloaded between different means of transport .

This system had its origins in the container transport of the 19th century and was further developed for standardized container transport in the early 20th century. It was spread around the world after the Second World War , which led to a significant reduction in transport costs ("container revolution"). This significantly accelerated the globalization of the flow of general cargo.

description

The worldwide spread of the container and the developments in the field of logistics that have resulted from it to this day are known as containerization, or in English : containerization . It is widely believed that this development has not yet reached its end. One importance lies in the closed transport chain of land and water. Containerization led to the replacement of other forms of transport; Through considerable cost savings, it also contributed to the growth in the total transport volume and to structural changes in trade and the production of goods. The safety of transports has also been greatly increased thanks to the standardized fixing on the vehicles, improved sealing options and the fact that the contents of containers remain invisible. Each ISO container has a number made up of four capital letters (which stand for the owner of the container), six digits and a control digit. Individual containers can also be equipped with satellite navigation .

The Emma Maersk in Aarhus , Sept. 5, 2006

Containers have spread rapidly since their inception. For example, when 16,000 TEU ( twenty-foot equivalent units ) were loaded when the container was introduced in the Bremen ports in 1966 , this number tripled in the following year. Driven further by the globalization of world trade, there was no end to this growth in sight until 2014. Following the modernization of the Altenwerder container terminal in the Port of Hamburg (2001 to 2004), which was completed in 2002, the throughput increased from 4.7 to 7.0 million  TEU . The larger the container ship , the lower the transport costs at sea per TEU .

In 1968 the largest container ship - a converted tanker - had a transport capacity of 700 TEU at a maximum speed of 20  knots , whereas today's standard ship has a loading capacity of 8,200 TEU at a speed of up to 25 knots (45 km / h). On the deck of such a ship, seven to eight layers of containers are stowed in 17 rows and below deck in 15 rows in nine layers. The largest container ship until 2012, the Emma Mærsk , has a slot capacity of over 13,000 TEU, effectively (homogeneously) it can transport up to 11,000 TEU. It is 398 m long, 56.4 m wide and has a maximum salt water draft of 16 m. By transporting goods in such huge quantities, costs are minimized. The transport costs for a bottle of wine from Australia to Europe are now 12 cents, and a pound of coffee from Central America is 3 cents.

history

origin

The origins of container transport can be found in the coal mines of Central England from the late 18th century. In 1795 Benjamin Outram opened the Little Eaton Gangway , which carried coal by carts made in his Butterley ironworks . These horse-drawn carts on the gangway were shaped like containers that were loaded with coal and shipped via the Derby Canal using barges .

In the 1830s, containers were already being transported on different continents by railways that could be transferred to other modes of transport. One of these railways was the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in the United Kingdom (England). "Simple rectangular wooden boxes, four on each wagon, are used to move coal from the Lancashire pits to Liverpool, where they are crane- loaded onto horse-drawn vehicles." Originally intended for loading coal onto barges in the late 1780s , for example on the Bridgewater Canal , used loose boxes to pack the coal. Later in the 1840s, both iron and wooden boxes were used. In the early 19th century, the closed containers were designed so that they could be loaded between road and rail.

At the beginning of the 20th century, various railway companies used similar containers. In the 1920s, the Railway Clearing House standardized the so-called RCH container. It was five or ten feet long, made of wood, and not stackable. This early standard container was a great success, but it was limited to the United Kingdom.

Loading a coach box, 1844

Between 1926 and 1947, the Chicago North Shore and Milwaukee Railway in the United States transported goods vehicles on flat cars between Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Chicago, Illinois. From 1929, Seatrain Lines began transporting covered freight cars on their ships between Cuba and New York. Mid-1930s began the Chicago Great Western Railway and later the New Haven Railroad to piggyback transport (transport of truck with wagon). In 1953, the CB&Q , Chicago and Eastern Illinois, and Southern Pacific inherited this invention. Most of these wagons were discarded flat wagons that were fitted with new floors. In 1955, 25 more railroad companies began various forms of piggyback transport in the United States.

During the Second World War , the Australian Army used containers to overcome the various gauge differences in the country. These non-stackable containers were similar in size to the later introduced 20-foot ISO containers and were mostly made of wood. In the course of the planning for a European broad gauge railway for the period after the Second World War, Oberreichsbahnrat Dr. Günther Wiens from the Reichsbahn-Zentralamt in Berlin and Reichsbahnrat Karl Bauer from the Reichsbahnbau-Direktion Munich propose to transport large containers that can 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 .

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 . This implemented an idea of ​​Army Transport Officer John Gordon Woolam on its liner service across the Irish Sea and later led to the construction of the first RoRo ships .

In the same year, the Deutsche Bundespost introduced the "Weber container" or the "Weber system" . These were standardized parcel containers for road and rail vehicles. The truck types used for this purpose were mainly the Mercedes-Benz L 3500 and L 6600 as well as the Büssing LU 77 and Magirus-Deutz S 3000 . From 1960, the containers were provided with rollers that could be loaded with pallet trucks.

In 1955, Malcom McLean , a former truck haulier, worked with the engineer Keith Tantlinger on the development of the modern intermodal container in the USA . The challenge was to design a shipping container that could be efficiently loaded onto ships and that offered safety for long sea voyages. The result was an eight feet high, eight feet wide, and ten feet long box made from 2.5 mm thick corrugated sheet steel . The design also introduced the twist lock mechanism on all four corners, which allowed these boxes to be easily lifted and secured. After helping McLean design it, Tantlinger convinced him to pass it on to the industry. This was the beginning of the international standardization of shipping containers .

Towards the end of World War II, the US Army used special containers to speed up the loading of the ship's transport. The US Army called these boxes "transporters". This "van" was a reusable container that was 8.5 feet long, 6.25 feet wide, and 6.25 feet high. This was made of stiff steel and had a cargo volume of 9,000 pounds. During the Korean War , the transporter for the transport of sensitive military equipment was further developed and prepared for more extensive use. The theft of material, damage to wooden boxes and an extended processing time by the showmen in the port of Busan convinced the army of the necessity of the steel containers. In 1952, the US Army began using the name CONEX for Container Express. The first major shipment of CONEX containers was carried out from the Columbus Central Depot in Georgia to the Port of San Francisco. Spare parts and equipment were shipped to the Japanese city of Yokohama and from there to Korea. The transport time was almost halved. During the Vietnam War , most of the material was shipped with CONEX. After the US Department of Defense standardized the eight by eight foot container with a length of multiples of ten feet, it was quickly adopted by cargo shipping.

These standards were adopted for containers in the UK and largely replaced the wooden containers of the 1950s. The USSR railways, on the other hand, use their own small containers.

Traffic volume

Around seventy percent of all general cargo is currently transported in containers. The number of container ships has doubled since 1996 . The container market grew three times faster than the global economy. In 2005 around 20 million containers were en route on 200 million journeys worldwide, around three quarters of which were on container ships.

Container handling of the 20 largest ports ( TEU , pieces)

space	port	2010	2009	2008	2007	2006	2005	2004	2003	2002
1.	Shanghai	29,069,000	25,002,000	27,980,000	26,150,000	21,710,000	18,084,000	14,557,200	11,281,000	8,620,000
2.	Singapore	28,430,800	25,866,400	29,918,200	27,932,000	24,792,400	23,192,000	21,329,000	18,410,500	16,940,900
3.	Hong Kong	23,532,000	20,983,000	24,248,000	23,881,000	23,234,000	22,427,000	21,984,000	20,449,000	19,144,000
4th	Shenzhen	22,509,700	18.250.100	21,413,888	18,468,900	16.197.173	13,655,484	10,649,900	7,613,754
5.	Busan	14,157,291	11,954,861	13,425,000	13,270,000	12,030,000	11,840,445	11,491,968	10,407,809	9,453,356
6th	Ningbo	13,144,000	10,502,800	11,226,000	9,349,000	7,068,000	5,208,000	4,005,500	2,772,200	1,860,000
7th	Guangzhou	12,550,000	11,190,000	11.001.300	9,200,000	6,600,000	4,683,000	3,308,200	2,761,000	2,180,000
8th.	Qingdao	12,012,000	10,260,000	10,320,000	9,462,000	7,702,000	6,307,000	5,139,700	4,238,000	3,410,000
9.	Dubai	11,600,000	11,190,000	11,827,299	10,653,026	8,923,465	7,619,222	6,428,883	5,151,955	4,194,264
10.	Rotterdam	11,145,804	9,743,290	10,783,825	10,790,604	9,690,052	9,286,757	8,280,787	7,143,920	6,506,311
11.	Tianjin	10,080,000	8,700,000	8,500,000	7,103,000	5,900,000	4,801,000	3,814,000	3,015,000	2,408,000
12.	Kaohsiung	9,181,211	8,581,273	9,676,554	10,256,829	9,774,670	9,470,000	9,714,115	8,843,365	8,493,052
13.	Port sound	8,870,000	7,309,779	7,970,000	6,320,000	5,543,527	5,243,593	4,841,235	4,533,212
14th	Antwerp	8,468,475	7,309,639	8,662,890	8,175,951	7,018,799	6,488,029	6,063,746	5,445,437	4,777,151
15th	Hamburg	7,895,736	7.007.704	9,737,110	9,888,792	8,861,804	8,087,545	7.003.479	6,137,926	5,373,999
16.	los Angeles	7,831,902	6,748,994	7,849,985	8,355,039	8,469,853	7,484,624	7,321,433	7,178,940	6,105,857
17th	Tanjung Pelepas	6,530,000	6,000,000	5,600,000	5,550,000	4,770,000	4,169,177	4,020,421	3,487,320	2,660,000
18th	Long Beach, CA	6,263,399	5,067,597	6,487,816	7,312,465	7,290,365	6,709,818	5,779,852	4,658,124	4,526,365
19th	Xiamen	5,820,000	4,680,400	5,034,600	4,627,000	4,018,700	3,343,000
20th	new York	5,292,020	4,561,527	5,265,053	5,299,105	5,086,070	4,785,318	4,478,480	4,067,811	3,749,014

Container ships

Containers in the port of Busan , South Korea

The first ship specially built for container transport entered service in Denmark in 1951. In the same year, container transport by ship between Seattle and Alaska was also started in the USA.

The first container ship for intermodal containers was the Clifford J. Rodgers on the White Pass and Yukon Route, built in Montreal in 1955 . On its first voyage between North Vancouver, British Columbia and Skagway, Alaska on November 26, 1955, 600 containers were transported. In Skagway, the containers were loaded onto container freight wagons for transport to the Yukon. This was the first intermodal transport to use trucks, ships and trains.

The American Malcom P. McLean is considered to be the inventor of the modern container , as he first used large containers for transport on trucks and ships on April 26, 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.

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 . MCLean originally pursued a trajectory concept in which it wanted to load large trucks onto ships. This process, known today as a RoRo ship, was not used because large amounts of possible cargo space are wasted here.

At that time, these containers were built according to American standards. However, since their dimensions were not applicable to European road conditions, the ISO standard containers that are still in use today were introduced after long negotiations.

The first German container ship, the Bell Vanguard , was launched in 1966 at the JJ Sietas shipyard in Hamburg . In 1981 the Frankfurt Express from Hapag Lloyd AG was the largest container ship in the world until then, with a slot capacity of 3430 TEU.

standardization

A container is being unloaded from a semi-trailer

During the first 20 years of the emergence of container transport, various container sizes and corner fixings were used. There were dozens of incompatible container systems in the US alone. Among the major container operators, Matson Navigation Company had a fleet of 24-foot containers, while Sea-Land Service Inc used 35-foot containers. The standard dimensions and fixings common today developed from a series of compromises between international shipping companies, railway companies and truck operators. These resulted in four important ISO leaflets for the standardization of global container transport:

• January 1968: R-668 defined the terms, dimensions and ratings
• July 1968: R-790 defined the identification marks
• January 1970: R-1161 made suggestions about the corner fixings
• October 1970: R-1897 determined a minimum of interior dimensions for the general use of freight containers

In the United States, container transport and other logistical developments were hindered by the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), which was introduced in 1887 to regulate rail traffic. In the 1960s, the ICC had to approve the introduction of container traffic. It was not until the influence of the ICC was pushed back and completely abolished in 1995 that container transport was fully integrated in the USA. Truck and rail traffic were deregulated in the 1970s and shipping in 1984.

A BNSF double decker container train passes the Cajon Pass in California.

In July 1985, freight trains that carried 200 40-foot containers ran in the USA for the first time. The double-decker container trains , which initially ran between Chicago and Long Beach, were each stacked two containers on top of each other.

Effects

Container transport reduced the costs of international transport and accelerated it, especially for consumer goods and bulk goods. It also dramatically changed the character of port cities around the world. Before the highly automated container handling, teams of 20 to 22 showmen were often necessary to get the individual goods off the ship. After the introduction of container traffic, this large number of showmen was no longer needed and the port facilities and job profiles changed completely.

One effect of this has been the decline of some ports and the rise of other ports. In the port of San Francisco, for example, the long pier for loading and unloading was no longer needed; on the other hand, there was no storage space for the containers. The port of San Francisco lost its leading role as a commercial port to the previously smaller port in neighboring Oakland. Something similar was observed between the ports of Manhattan and New Jersey . In the UK, stevedores unions protested against the introduction of container transport, which led to the demise of the ports of London and Liverpool. On the other hand, Felixstowe and Rotterdam in the Netherlands grew into major ports. Due to the lack of water depth for the necessary draft of the ships, shipping traffic in inland ports declined in favor of the seaports after the rise of container traffic. With the intermodal containers, the sorting and loading of the containers can take place far from the point of embarkation.

In maritime shipping, in addition to transport in containers, there are also classic general cargo , dry bulk ( bulk cargo ) and tank loads, as well as RoRo and LASH transport and other special transports. Increasingly, high-quality bulk goods and liquid hazardous goods are also being shipped in containers.

For volumes below the loading capacity of a container, there is part-load traffic, for volumes above the capacity of the largest container, general cargo traffic will be maintained. Classic general cargo traffic between international seaports has meanwhile become meaningless for standardized cargo.

Container revolution

The worldwide spread of the container and the developments in the field of logistics that have resulted from it to this day are known as the container revolution or containerization . According to experts, this development has not yet reached its peak. The importance lies in the closed transport chain of land and water. However, the container revolution is not only leading to the replacement of other forms of transport, but also contributing to the growth of the total transport volume and the structural change in trade and the production of goods through considerable cost savings. The safety of transports has also been greatly increased thanks to the standardized fixing on the vehicles, improved sealing options and the fact that the contents of containers remain invisible. The container number is used to control this system. There are discussions about equipping each individual container with satellite navigation .

The expansion of the container has been rapid since its introduction due to these advantages. For example, when 16,000 TEU were loaded when the container was introduced in the port of Bremen in 1966, this number tripled in the following year. Driven further by the processes of globalization in world trade, especially the growth in exports from China, the spread of the container continues to this day with annual growth rates of currently around 10%. Currently, 26% of the containers used come from China. Following the modernization of the Altenwerder container terminal in the Port of Hamburg, which was completed in 2002, there was an increase in throughput from 4.7 to 7.0 million TEU between 2001 and 2004. In addition, the fact that the transport costs at sea per TEU are lower, the larger the container ship, the larger the ship units are.

In 1968 the largest container ship - a converted tanker - had a transport capacity of 700 TEU at a maximum speed of 20  knots , whereas today's standard ship has a loading capacity of 8,200 TEU at a speed of up to 25 knots (45 km / h). On the deck of such a ship, 7–8 layers of containers are stowed in 17 rows and below deck 15 rows in 9 layers. The largest container ship until 2012, the Emma Mærsk , has a slot capacity of over 13,000 TEU, effectively (homogeneously) it can transport up to 11,000 TEU. It is 398 m long, 56.4 m wide and has a maximum salt water draft of 16 m. By transporting goods in such huge quantities, costs are minimized. The transport costs for a bottle of wine from Australia to Europe are now 12 cents, and a pound of coffee from Central America is 3 cents.

In July 1985, freight trains that carried 200 40-foot containers ran in the USA for the first time. The double-decker container trains , which initially ran between Chicago and Long Beach, were each stacked two containers on top of each other.

21st century

In 2009, approximately 90% of the world's non-bulk cargo was transported in containers on cargo ships. 26% of all container shipments were carried out from China. In 2009, 105,976,701 containers were shipped in China (both international and coastal traffic; excluding Hong Kong), 21,040,096 containers in Hong Kong and only 34,299,572 in the USA. In 2005, 18 million containers made over 200 million trips a year. The largest ships transport over 14,500 TEU, such as the 396 m long Emma Mærsk (launched in August 2006). There is now the even larger Triple-E-Class , which is 400 m long and 59 m wide. This can transport up to 18,000 TEU. These ships are forecast to reach the Malaccamax size, limited only by the draft of the Strait of Malacca . These ships will be 470 m long and 60 m wide.

Few saw the extent of the impact of container transport. In the 1950s, Harvard economics professor Benjamin Chinitz predicted that New York would benefit from container transport, as it could move its goods to the southern United States more cheaply. However, he did not foresee that these goods would be much cheaper to import from abroad. Most studies foresaw that shipping lines would slowly switch to container traffic, but they did not foresee that the containers themselves would have a much greater impact on the volume of trade and choice of carriers.

The widespread ISO standard container also brought changes to other freight transport standards, for example truck swap bodies were changed to standard dimensions. The worldwide use of the widespread transport pallet also changed due to the ISO container, since euro pool pallets , for example, cannot be stowed in such a container without loss.

An important advantage of container transport is the increase in load security. The cargo is not visible to everyone and is much less likely to be stolen. The doors of the containers are usually sealed so that tampering is more obvious. Individual containers are also equipped with electronic shipment tracking and can therefore be constantly monitored. For example, whether the air pressure changes when you open a door. This drastically reduced the theft rate.

The use of uniform container sizes across the globe reduced the problems caused by different rail gauges . The majority of the railway networks worldwide are equipped with the so-called standard gauge , but in many countries such as Russia or India a broad gauge is used, while in Africa and South America, for example, there are also large narrow- gauge networks . The use of containers in all of these countries makes it easy to switch between the different systems.

Containers are also used in the loading of cars and other vehicles for overseas transport. 20 and 40 foot containers are used for this.

Container standards

ISO container

→ Main article : ISO container

40 foot container

The most common container is the so-called ISO container standardized by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) according to ISO 668.

The five standard lengths of these containers are 20 feet (6.1 m), 40 feet (12.2 m), 45 feet (13.7 m), 48 feet (14.6 m) and 53 feet (16.2 m) . The twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) is used as the standard measure. This refers to an equivalent unit of charge 20 feet long and 8 feet wide. The height is not considered here. This varies between 4 feet (half-height container) and 9 feet 6 inches (high cube container).

The maximum load capacity of a 20-foot container is 24 tonnes, for a 40-foot high cube container it is 30.48 tonnes. For safety reasons, this is reduced to 22 tons for a 20-foot container and 27 tons for a 40-foot container.

The originally chosen height of 8 feet was chosen because of the clearance profile of railway tunnels .

The inland container is a special form of the ISO container . This type of container was specially developed for European inland traffic and offers a slightly wider interior space (wider than 2,400 mm), so that two Euro pallets (each 1,200 mm wide) can be placed next to each other, which means that when using regular ISO containers and Euro pallets due to the somewhat Too narrow interior spaces (less than 2,400 mm) avoid unavoidable empty spaces and achieve a higher capacity.

Air freight container

→ Main article : Unit Load Device

Unloading of containers from a Boeing 747 of the JAL

Due to the various restrictions of a cargo aircraft in terms of size and weight, the use of standard containers does not make sense here. The bulbous fuselage of a pure cargo aircraft with a standard ISO container would waste too much space and it would be too big for the cargo deck of a passenger aircraft. In addition, the steel container alone accounts for almost 10% of the maximum total weight. That is why various airlines have developed their own lightweight aluminum containers in various shapes, specially adapted to the shape of the aircraft. The international association of aviation companies IATA also developed a standard aviation container with a volume of 11.52 m³ (407 cubic feet).

Other container systems

M250 freight railcar with container according to the JR Freight standard

• Door-to-door (Germany)
• ARKAS
• NYC Container (1922)
• Japanese rail containers of the Japan Freight Railway Company
• Mack (1925)
• English rail container (1927)
• Victorian Railways reefer container (1928)
• International Competition (1929)
• GWR container (1930)
• International Chamber of Commerce (1931)
• International Container Bureau (1933)
• SAR Wolseley break of gauge (1936)
• Queensland Railways Milk Container, 2000 Gallon, Road-Rail (1946)
• RACE Australia (1978)
• PODS (1998)
• SECU (Sweden, Finland, United Kingdom), 95 t large container (2005?)

Container cargo

45 m container cranes in the port of Hamburg ( CTA )

Full container load

A full container load (FCL) describes a container that is fully loaded and unloaded by a freight forwarder for a contractor. As a consequence, this container is only loaded with a single load. Ideal for this type of shipping are containers that are completely filled to their load capacity by one load. However, this is usually not the case.

Less than container load

Straddle carrier in the port of Copenhagen

The so-called less than container load (LCL) describes a transport that does not take up the full load capacity of a container. The abbreviation LCL used to refer to “Less than (railway) Car Load” for general cargo transport on the railways.

Productivity in handling and transport

The productivity advantage of the container is for ocean freight

• in large volumes for a single lift (approx. a factor of ten compared to general cargo carriers)
• in the simplification of the clarification in the customs seal procedure and in the standardization of the transport aids for the lifting process (see also gantry crane )
• in the uniform use of space in the ship: the dimensions of container ships are adapted to the standardized container dimensions.

The productivity of transport by truck is lower than that of light trailers or swap bodies due to the higher empty weight and the inevitable transport of empty containers on unbalanced routes .

The use of containers offers further advantages in handling during transshipment and loading in land transport:

• Significantly shorter handling times, also in intermodal transport
  • When changing from one mode of transport to another, the goods no longer have to be repacked, instead the container is always transported as a whole (homogenization of heterogeneous goods)
  • standardized ISO containers can partially be reloaded automatically
• Uniform use of space for storage, transshipment and in the ship: The dimensions of warehouses, cranes , container ships , etc. can be adapted to the standardized container dimensions

Today, 70% of all general cargo is transported in containers. The shipping companies transport 356 million containers by ship every year. Up to 30% of the containers in maritime traffic are transported empty (Asia Westbound, Atlantic Eastbound). This need not cause additional traffic - if more goods are transported from China to Europe than in the opposite direction, it inevitably leads to container ships traveling half-empty from Europe to Asia; taking empty containers with you does not cause any significant additional effort.

Handling equipment

Mobile truck being loaded onto an eight-axle wagon

Two reach stackers from the front

A large number of equipment has been developed for reloading the containers to make this process fast and efficient. The container cranes are among the largest of these handling equipment . These secure the loading of container ships onto the harbor quay . There they are transported onwards in modern container terminals with driverless transport vehicles. Other, mostly smaller aids for transporting and loading containers are straddle carriers , reach stackers and forklifts . All these handling equipment are equipped with spreaders with which the container can be packed and lifted at its four upper corners. In combined transport , horizontal loading techniques are also used to load containers from trucks onto rail wagons, such as the CT scooter (formerly Mobiler ).

Special transport vehicles

• Container Ship
• Container chassis - semi-trailer for articulated trucks with twistlock locking
• Container wagons - rail freight wagons

Special loading equipment

• Container bridge
• Straddle carrier
• Reach stacker
• Mobile (for loading and transport)
• ContainerMover (for loading and transport)

Trivia

Records

Aerial view of the container terminal in Bremerhaven

In 2010, the Bremerhaven container terminal was entered in the Guinness Book of Records as the largest contiguous container terminal (CT) in the world . In 2010 it had a floor space of 2,000,000 m².

Increase in fuel consumption

Containerization increases fuel consumption and reduces transport capacity, as the container must be transported together with the actual cargo. Stackable containers are heavier than those with lower requirements. This makes container loading of special bulk goods transports unattractive. For most goods, however, the cost savings in cargo handling are higher than the higher fuel consumption.

crime

Containers are used for smuggling . Not every container is opened and inspected upon arrival. Since the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001 , efforts have been made to prevent weapons, bombs and terrorists from entering an industrialized country in containers. For example, the US government launched the Container Security Initiative in 2002 . For fiscal reasons ( customs ) and other reasons, incoming containers are now (2016) examined more thoroughly than before.

Empty container

Since the containers do not always have to be refilled at the unloading point or the costs of moving empty containers to another loading point are higher than the value of a container, empty container management is necessary. For these reasons, freighter lines and container rental companies offer cheap or free container transfers.

It is also necessary to recycle damaged containers or containers that have reached the end of their service life. This happens in the form of scrap metal recycling or the rebuilding of shipping containers.

Containers fall overboard in a hurricane - Winter North Atlantic 1980

Path of the Friendly Floatees

Losses at sea

Occasionally, containers fall from ships into the sea , mostly during storms . Between 2,000 and 10,000 containers are lost at sea every year. Containers that have gone overboard in rough seas sink because they are full of water, but not all containers sink; some also drift on or just below the surface of the water and thus pose a difficult-to-detect danger to shipping. The cargo from lost containers is a problem for oceanographers an opportunity to global ocean currents to track, such as when an individual with rubber ducks loaded container in 1992 in the Pacific, where the rubber ducks as friendly floatees were washed up on various coastlines in the world.

Since 2007, the International Chamber of Shipping and the World Shipping Council have been working on improving container cargo, crew training and stacking in order to improve the safety of container cargo in heavy seas.

At the beginning of January 2019, the MSC Zoe lost 291 containers on the voyage to Bremerhaven in the North Sea during storm Alfrida . Three containers contained dangerous goods; Benzoyl peroxide or lithium batteries .

Unions

A major controversy in the wake of the container revolution was fought in Washington DC. It was only in the early 1970s that intermodal transports were allowed to be tariffed. And almost ten years later, in 1987, the US Supreme Court won a case that no members of the port workers' union had to be employed to load the containers . This led to even further reductions in transport costs and accelerated international trade.

See also

• Container terminal
• Tilting chassis

literature

• Peer Janssen: “Thing and absurd at the same time” · 50 years ago the container era began in German ports - and changed it . In: Waterkant 2-16 from June 2016, issue 122, Förderkreis Waterkant eV (ed.), Emsdetten 2016, ISSN  1611-1583 , pp. 31/32

Web links

Commons : containerization  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Commons : Containers lost at sea  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• CESifo Working Paper (2013) / Daniel M. Bernhofen, Zouheir El-Sahli, Richard Kneller: Estimating the effects of the container revolution on world trade (0.5 MB, 35 pages)

Individual evidence

1. ^ David Ripley: The Little Eaton Gangway and Derby Canal . Oakwood Press, 1993, ISBN 0-8536-1431-8
2. ↑ RJ Essery, DP Rowland WHERE Steel: British Goods Wagons from 1887 to the Present Day . Augustus M. Kelly Publishers (New York 1979, 92)
3. ↑ Robert E. Mohowski: Seat Rain: Railroad or steamship line? In: Classic Trains , Spring 2011, pp. 64–73
4. ^ David Burke: With Iron Rails . 1988, SRANSW , p. 8.26
5. ^ Anton Joachimsthaler : Hitler's broad gauge railway . Eisenbahn-Kurier-Verlag, Freiburg i. Br. 1981, pp. 255f.
6. ↑ Model information ( Memento of the original dated January 6, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , bahnpost.net 
7. ↑ The Box that Changed Britain , Roger McGough (Narrator), Graeme McAulay (Director and Producer), Dominic Crossley-Holland (Executive Producer) - BBC documentary from 2010
8. ↑ History & Development of the Container ( Memento of the original from December 27, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . US Army Transportation Museum. United States Army Transportation School. Retrieved December 29, 2007 
9. ↑ CONEX ( Memento of the original from June 29, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) 
10. ^ Photos of containers in Baku . Freespace.virgin.net. March 9, 1999. Archived from the original on March 3, 2016. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved November 28, 2011. 
11. ↑ http://www.hafen-hamburg.de/content/containerumschlag-im-vergleich
12. ↑ http://www.panynj.gov/port/pdf/port-trade-statistics-summary-2001-2010.pdf
13. ^ Brian J. Cudahy: The Containership Revolution: Malcom McLean's 1956 Innovation Goes Global . TR News (c / o National Academy of Sciences). Number 246, September – October 2006. (Adobe Acrobat * .PDF document; 1.1 MB)
14. ^ ^{A b} Levinson (2006), The Box .
15. ^ A. Rushton, J. Oxley, P. Croucher: The Handbook of Logistics and Distribution Management . Kogan Page, London 2004
16. ↑ Virginia Postrel: The Box That Changed the World . In: Dynamist.com , March 23, 2006. Retrieved February 14, 2008. 
17. ↑ ^{a b} Message Containers drive double-decker in the USA . In: Eisenbahntechnische Rundschau , 34, No. x, 1985, p. 622.
18. ^ CE Ebeling: Evolution of a Box . In: Invention and Technology . 23, No. 4, Winter 2009, ISSN  8756-7296 , pp. 8/9.
19. ↑ Container port traffic (TEU: 20 foot equivalent units) | Data | Table . Data.worldbank.org. Retrieved November 28, 2011.
20. ^ Henry, Robert Selph: This Fascinating Railroad Business . The Bobs-Merrill Company, 1942, pp. 319-321.
21. ↑ ^{a b} Containers Overboard!  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. TT Club ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Maritime insurers), accessed February 26, 2011    
22. ↑ Janice Podsada: Lost Sea Cargo: Beach Bounty or Junk? In: National Geographic News, June 19, 2001, [1] , accessed April 17, 2007
23. ↑ Rubber Duckies Map The World , CBS News , 31 July 2003
24. ↑ Murdoch & Tozer. A Master's guide to Container Securing ( Memento of the original dated July 16, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The  archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 2.1 MB) , Lloyd's Register & Standard P&I Club. Retrieved February 26, 2011.
25. ↑ Banana box slip a worry . In: Lloyd's List Daily Commercial News , Informa Australia, February 7, 2008. Archived from the original on December 16, 2005 Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Retrieved February 14, 2008.  
26. ↑ Disaster of the "MSC Zoe": Microplastic on Borkum. In: ndr.de. Retrieved January 15, 2019 . 
27. ↑ Eckhard-Herbert Arndt: "MSC Zoe" as an involuntary permanent berth . In: Daily port report from January 8, 2019, p. 1
28. ↑ Judgment of the United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit dated August 9, 1988 on the union binding of showmen ( Memento of the original from March 25, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.