The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger

Like most inhabitants of earth, I never gave much thought to intermodal shipping. It wasn't until I served as an economic development officer in southern Afghanistan and began looking into ways we could more efficiently export the high value fruits and nuts grown locally to the lucrative markets of the Middle East that I discovered "the box": the ubiquitous forty-foot container we've all seen on tractor trailer chassis, cargo ships and holding yards. On Kandahar Airfield, where I was stationed for a year, these containers were everywhere; literally thousands of them, double stacked in lines a half mile long, most serving as temporary warehouses while waiting for a way out of Afghanistan. As director of strategy and corporate development for a leading Silicon Valley software company, I also happen to be interested in disruptive technologies and business concepts, innovations that totally remake or create industries, the type of stuff that Harvard Business School's Clayton Christensen often writes about. Thus, Marc Levinson's "The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger," was the perfect book for me and, as it turned out, one of the most enjoyable, enlightening reads I've had all year. In short, Levinson argues that containerization, which was introduced by the transportation pioneer Malcolm McLean in the early 1950s, did more than lower the cost of shipping. It fundamentally changed the world economy. And it did so in several ways. First, it redefined the meaning of a port city. In the era of break bulk shipping, all-purpose cargo ships that are manually (and slowly and expensively) loaded and unloaded by longshoremen, it made sense to have manufacturing close to the docks to save on transportation costs. Once the container began to dominate shipping, the only purpose of a port was to load and unload containers as rapidly as possible using labor saving cranes. Associated industries like light manufacturing, insurance, freight forwarding and other services, once co-located with the docks, were no longer relevant to the waterfront. Such a change spelled the end of shipping as a major operation in numerous traditional port cities, from Baltimore and San Francisco to Liverpool and London. In the busiest port in the US, New York City, the massive new container facility operation across the harbor at Newark and Elizabeth wiped out the long established docks of Brooklyn and Manhattan with a suddenness that shocked politicians, labor bosses and shippers, alike. 'The primary reason for this change is that the container turned shipping into a capital intensive industry that thrived on economies of scale, making the once sleepy shipping industry look a lot like the hyper competitive US railroads of the 1850s. In the break bulk era, dockside labor accounted for the major part of operational costs and the expense of overland transportation made numerous port city venues necessary. The economics of the container ship, requiring regular debt payments to finance their construction and only earning revenue while underway, dictated that fewer ports were visited and more cargo was loaded at each. Suddenly, small port cities like Mobile and Tampa were simply passed by, devastating the local longshoremen unions and others reliant on the shipping industry. Meanwhile, upstart ports like Oakland, Singapore and Felixstowe in the UK emerged as major container shipping terminals. Second, it changed the geography of global manufacturing. The efficiencies of container shipping reduced transportation costs so dramatically that they no longer figured significantly influenced end user prices, whereas in the break bulk days the cost of transoceanic shipping acted as a double digit tariff on imported goods. Suddenly, it made economic sense to relocate manufacturing facilities in distant, low labor cost countries and simply ship the goods halfway around the world in container ships. Third, the economic revolution of the container was slow in coming. The real revolution didn't happen until the shippers (i.e. the makers of TVs, refrigerators, etc.) centralized operations and began to take advantage of container efficiencies, which also really weren't available until deregulation opened up opportunities for big shippers to save with long term contracts and steep bulk shipping discounts. Process innovations like Toyota's "just in time" supply chain, which gained popularity in the early 1980s, saw large corporations invest unprecedented time and energy to improve their logistics operations. Levinson writes that by the time the container dominated transoceanic shipping -- over 80% of all goods traveling by container -- the vast majority of cargo were not finished consumer goods but rather "intermediate goods," parts and supplies used for final manufacturing. Several additional themes emerge from "The Box." One is that organized labor and government regulation, no matter how well meaning, are often the most powerful inhibiters to business innovation, which comes with an enormous price tag that is ultimately passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices for inferior goods. Next, few people present at the creation ever "get" (and profit from) the full affect of sweeping change that new technologies and processes like intermodal shipping. Unions failed to appreciate its potential impact and suffered dearly because of it. It took governments decades to figure out that they shouldn't be in the port management business and leave the extensive capital outlays to private investors. And most private sector investors were wrong about the speed at which the container would alter the economics of international shipping. RJ Reynolds foray into the business through the acquisition of McLean's Sea Land ended in disappointment for everyone, their shareholders foremost among them. And even McLean himself, the godfather of the container and a man lionized by Levinson, got the container very wrong on several occasions, including the 1980s bankruptcy of his acquired US Lines, which sought to establish a round-the-world container transportation route. Most intriguingly, those that did profit from the revolution, such as Hong Kong-based Evergreen and Denmark-based Maersk Lines, were no early movers or bleeding edge innovators. Indeed, they didn't get into the container shipping business until the 1970s. As fascinating and compelling as the argument presented in "The Box" may be, it is only a hypothesis. Levinson has almost NO quantitative evidence to defend his claims. There are very few graphs and data tables in this book, although one gets the distinct impression it was not for lack of trying on Levinson's part. "The technical problems involved in measuring shipping rates during the 1960s and 1970s are so great that reliable measures of the container's price impact are unlikely to be developed," he glumly concludes. I loved this book. You may, too, if you find the basic themes interesting -- innovation, globalization, and market disruption.

If you are the least bit interested in the evolution of the global economy and the factors involving container shipping that influenced it, look no further than The Box. Well written with plenty of statistics (where available), anecdotal details of the rise and fall and rise again of global shipping companies, this book held my attention the whole way and left me wanting more. It piqued my interest to see those container ports and learn more about container ships. It is most amazing how the system is today fairly seamless between ships, ports, railways and trucks - it wasn't always that way. Malcom McLean and other big players in the game brought this about - they were willing to take huge risks over and over to see their dream fulfilled - and as I live close to McLean VA, I now know why that town might be named after him. Read this book, it will expand your horizons and give new meaning to your place in the world as a consumer.

Commonplace objects that go almost un-noticed in daily life often conceal interesting stories. "The Box" by Marc Levinson is a case in point. All of us have seen shipping containers being trucked along the highways or sitting in some factory, but we pay them little attention. Yet the cheap shoes we wear and the affordable digital cameras we tote around owe their low cost to a global economic revolution driven to a surprising extent by the shipping container. Levinson tells this remarkable story in his exceptionally readable book. His description of working life on the docks and how break-bulk cargo was handled in pre-container days makes fascinating reading. Traditional waterfront work practices and communities disappeared with remarkable speed once containerisation took over. The resulting derelict port areas and piers in most major waterfront cities in the world morphed into trendy shopping, eating and entertainment precincts - all due to a revolution wrought by the shipping container. Industries that once clustered near major ports to minimise high transport costs were then free to spread widely and even globally in search of the lowest business costs. Levinson writes about the technical and economic aspects of his subject in a very clear manner, fully accessible to the general reader. His explanation of the shipping "rate wars" (my term) of the late 1960's - early 1970's is a gem of clarity. Not being familiar with the US transportation regulatory regime in the mid-20th century, I was astonished to read that the US ICC regulated routes and freight rates to a degree that seems ludicrous today. To take one example, an American trucking company had to get ICC approval to transport particular goods along defined routes and charge their customers regulated freight rates. Advocates of containerisation had to fight against such entrenched bureaucracies and vested interests. Some longshore Unions were able to negotiate bizarre contracts to preserve dwindling jobs. In one case, filled containers delivered to a port had to be emptied on the docks and refilled with exactly the same cargo before the containers could be loaded onto a ship. The fact that shippers agreed to such contracts says a lot about relative power on the waterfront at that time. The book is not only about the shipping container, it is also about the impact of transformative technologies on traditional communities and jobs and it is about how new technologies can re-order the economic landscape. The book is excellently arranged and progresses through pre-container work practices on the docks, early experiments with containers, the struggles with unions, standard setting, development of dedicated container ports, the frenzy of ship building and resultant collapses and so on. I was pleased to see virtually no padding in the book. Quite a few books of this genre don't really have enough material to fill a book, so they are padded out with marginally relevant background text. Disappointingly, there are no photos or diagrams in the book. I wanted to see diagrams of the controversial "corner castings" that took up much time in standard setting meetings. I would also have liked to see photos of some of the historic early containers, cranes and ships - and waterfront life and work before containerisation. I loved this book. I strongly recommend the book to readers interested in the popular genre of books on commonplace "objects" such as the shipping container. Those working in the shipping, transport and logistics industries may have never given a thought to the history of such a basic tool of their professions. They will also enjoy reading about its history.

個人的に興味ある本でした。日本語訳がおかしかった所があったので、原文を読む必要を感じて購入しました。専門的な内容もあり、翻訳の方は大変だったろうと思いました。疑問が解決して良かったです。

I bought the book for work purposes, to learn more about supply chains and getting products to market. The book is well researched and well written, and to my surprises found it an interesting read. Better than the 'dry read' I was expecting

I liked this book a lot. Its a history of the shipping container but it draws in much more. As an aside there is a good account of ports and unionised port labour - and how that influenced the development of the container. What is most striking for a technology that has come to dominate this mode of transport is: * how conservative the industry was at the outset and how much it resisted the container * how quickly the technology changed during the early days - ship sizes, container size, the power of ships, etc. * innovative players often saw the container as a way to improve their advantage. The same process meant that dominant players weren't (initially) interested in the container. Well written and well researched. The evolving story kept me reading in a way that many business books don't achieve.

Man mag es nicht glauben und auch ich hatte meine Zweifel, aber "The box" ist ein hochspannendes Buch. Der Autor schreibt selbst, dass er auf Unverständnis gestoßen ist, wenn er beim Smalltalk erzählt hat, an was für einem Thema er gerade arbeitet, aber wie der Container unsere Welt für immer verändert und die Globalisierung erst so richtig ermöglich hat, wird hier super beschrieben.

L'ho preso per lavoro in quanto necessito di farmi una cultura rispetto ai container e a tutto il relativo business, inoltre volevo imparare i termini in inglese e in italiano anche volendo non ho trovato alcun volume tipo questo. Peccato che si soffermi davvero troppo su tutta la parte storica dell'avvento dei container... Noiosissimo e di difficile lettura; anche se il mio inglese é quasi madrelingua, faccio molta fatica a capire tante delle parole.