The first container voyage left Newark in April 1956
💡DETAILS
On 26 April 1956 the Ideal-X, a converted wartime tanker, sailed from Newark, New Jersey, for Houston with 58 truck trailer bodies lashed to a deck built for the purpose. The trucking entrepreneur Malcom McLean was behind it.
This is the voyage Marc Levinson uses to open the story in 📕 The Box (my paraphrase, not his words). His point is that the steel box itself was the least of it. Cranes, ports, ships, lorries, contracts and labour agreements all had to be remade around one agreed size before the saving arrived.
Why I kept it: read in Lisbon, in sight of a container terminal. My whole industry is younger than my mother.
Where I found it: 📕 The Box, with my notes in 📖 Levinson on the container. What it led to is 💎 Standardising the boring part is what frees the interesting part.