Studying the Impact of Lost Shipping Containers

swellconvivialguy writes "Looking at a picture of the world's largest container ship, it's easy to visualize how 10,000 containers fall overboard from these vessels every year. Scientists from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute are now undertaking the Lost Container Cruise, an attempt to gauge the effects of shipping containers lost at sea by studying a tire-filled container, which marine biologists discovered in the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. (The research [PDF] is being funded by a multi-million dollar settlement with the operators of the Med Taipei, the ship that lost the cargo.) The work is not unlike studying a deep water shipwreck: Use robotic submarine to take pictures and collect sediment samples; repeat."

Comments

So THAT'S where my Chinese Ebay battery went

[cpu6502]

Times two.
Both were probably Lost at sea in transit from the Beijing sellers to my home.
;-)

Can't they tie them down?

[yog]

Wow, 10,000? Why don't they use chains or something to hold those bad boys down in choppy waters? Or, I don't know, built steel railings along the perimeters? Or inter-locking Lego-like attachments between containers?

I guess the good news is that they will mostly sink down into the muddy bottom and be out of the way. You wouldn't want those things floating on the surface like icebergs or something.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Finallyjoined!!!]

I guess the good news is that they will mostly sink down into the muddy bottom and be out of the way.

Strangely most of them float, as ocean yachtsmen will testify; they're a serious hazard.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[PitaBred]

Because that would cost more than just claiming it against insurance. Those ships run 24x7... they would lose more money from downtime than they would ever make it worthwhile in keeping that shit on deck. Picture perfect example of the tragedy of the commons colliding with unregulated capitalism.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[kidgenius]

They DO lash the containers down. But, you start getting a lot of swaying going on, and those lashings can break free.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[DocZayus]

But if they floated, wouldn't it be easier to find and recover instead of letting whatever's in it to rot and pollute the oceans?

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI, they do interlock with each other. Otherwise you would have far more lost every year. There are millions and millions of containers shipped every year, 10k is really nothing.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Attila Dimedici]

According to Wikipedia there are around 18 million shipping containers in the world that make over 200 million trips per year. Which means that 10,00 lost at sea each year is just a drop in the bucket. Spending any significant amount of money to reduce that number would not be a worthwhile expenditure.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[kidgenius]

Consider a few scenarios....

Let's say it goes overboard and you don't realize it until you get to port. Now, you have to send a ship out to pick it up, and you have no clue where it is. Currents and storms could've pushed that container to who knows where, and that's assuming they floated instead of sunk. How long do you search for it? Searching at all would cost orders of magnitudes more than the container is likely worth.

Now, let's say it goes overboard and you DO realize it. Do you stop? Follow along as the container floats until another vessel can come pick it up? Those container ships don't have cranes to pick something out of the water with. The cranes are always at the docks. How much does that cost to wait next to a single container (at worst, from a value perspective) while a ship comes and picks it up. What about lost money due to perishables in other containers going bad?

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Anonymous Coward]

If they floated, then why put them on a ship? Won't someone please think of the ships?

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[cpu6502]

>>>Picture perfect example of the tragedy of the commons colliding with unregulated capitalism.

Sadly for you, this is NOT a perfect example because the Ship (and train) containers do interlock like legos and they do tie them down with chains. Shippers really do NOT want to tell their customers, "We lost your cargo," and risk losing them to competitors. They'd prefer to have zero loss.

But of course zero loss is as impractical as zero downtime for your website or the software you are writing. It's an unrealistic demand.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[SydShamino]

I wonder how many of those contained people.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Anonymous Coward]

According to Wikipedia, there is over 250 million cars in use in the US alone that travel a staggering 5+ trillion miles. Which means that 20,000 people that die in the hundreds of thousands of crashes is just a drop in the bucket. Spending any significant amount of money to reduce this amount would not be a worthwhile expenditure.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[jklovanc]

Except for steel railings, the shippers do everything you have mentioned. The reason for no railing is that the containers themselves are the structure and they are stacked far above the hull of the ship.

Here is the tie down that goes between the containers http://www.tandemloc.com/0_securing/S_AD54000A.asp

Here is a picture of the lashing used http://www.flickr.com/photos/blueship/137784714/

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[dainbug]

spending any significant amount of money to reduce that number would not be a worthwhile expenditure.

Well, unless you calculate the real long term damage it does to oceans -> microbes -> plankton -> fish -> humans.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[GreenTom]

Here's a pic of a container ship after going through rough seas: http://i.imgur.com/4ynah.jpg. I'm stunned that those containers are still on board. Looks like they're chained down, but even metal breaks eventually

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah! Won't somebody think of all the stowaways drowning in the shipping containers?!

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[mehrotra.akash]

GPS beacons on containers + weekly cleanup ships which collect all the floating containers in a particular area

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know they're not just sending the containers back and forth right? It's the stuff inside them which is important.
If those 10,000 contain bigscreen TVs or computers or cars or [insert expensive item here...], then each ""lost"" (heavy quotation there) container could cost a lot of money.

Though, to the GP, it was my understanding that most ship captains had a policy about dumping cargo in high-seas in cases where the ship may be in danger; so any attempts at securing the containers would need to support quickly releasing the containers, as well as not delay (un)loading of containers when in port.
Also, ""lost"" containers provide a tidy profit to those that find them.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Anonymous Psychopath]

Nice try. 10,000 is a tiny, infinitesimal fraction of the 18,000,000 containers that make 200,000,000 trips every year. I'm surprised it's not more.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[jonnythan]

You can't replace someone's mother.

You can replace a shipping container full of t-shirts.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[gblackwo]

It is a drop in the bucket.

You have a poor argument to begin with because as vehicles become safer, drivers in general are more comfortable and feel safer to the point that they drive more recklessly thus defeating the advantages of fancy brake and steering systems. The only easily viable way of actually protecting drivers from themselves on average would be to have race car quality roll cages.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[KUHurdler]

I propose that we fill the ocean with dirt, and then drive our cargo across on trucks.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[GreenTom]

Hmmm...just brainstorming, but shouldn't it be pretty cheap to put a GPS and water-activated beacon in each container? I bet the GPS is already there in a lot of cases, I can see that paying for itself in logistics management once the thing's on a train or truck. Then the insurance or salvage companies could operate smaller oceangoing cranes to scoop them up. Anyone have a guess what the average value of the contents of a container is? Since insurance companies and/or shippers are paying for all these losses, doesn't seem like it would have to be much to maybe worth somethign like this. Then again, maybe the cargo's worthless after a dip in the ocean. http://www.ttclub.com/TTCLUB/PubArc.nsf/D5E4C4B3A805731980256792004C617E/02CE747115C182F780256A6500596BF5?OpenDocument

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just as depressing is the estimation that a single large container ship emits as much greenhouse gasses in a day as all the cars in US do in a year. Staggering how shitty that is.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[StikyPad]

Or self driving cars. We could call them "automobiles."

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[GreenTom]

The data doesn't really support your claim. Between 1920 and 2000, the rate of fatal automobile accidents per vehicle-mile decreased by a factor of about 17. No idea if that's better technology, drunk driving laws, better educated drivers, better roads or whatever, but the idea that transportation safety can't be influenced just doesn't hold up.

Despite libertarians wishes, policy actually does matter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_United_States

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[jdpars]

Actual GPS is not cheap. Cell tower "GPS" is cheap. There are no cell towers in the ocean, as far as I know.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[spacey]

Making the signal public after a week or so lost (to give the owner/shipper a chance to pick it up), and adding in the fact that there are rights to salvage in the open sea, and you'd probably have a great business opportunity.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Anonymous Coward]

They tend to float with their tops right at the surface, so they're really hard to see.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[bickerdyke]

They usually ARE interlocked. They have holes on their corners which are clamped together with standardized clamps.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Coren22]

Like providing a habitat for them? Take a look at the story, the container in the Monterey Bay Sanctuary became a habitat for sea cucumbers, snails, and crabs.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[SockPuppetOfTheWeek]

Actual GPS is actually pretty cheap, but knowing where you are isn't very helpful unless you also have a way of telling someone where that is so that they can come pick you up. You need a radio or satellite transmitter that's capable of relaying your coordinates to someone who's on land, or at least a few hundred miles off. That's what makes it expensive, not so much the GPS portion of the device.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Finallyjoined!!!]

Umm, they're (well the ones that do sink) actually beneficial as they form artificial reefs/protect from trawling etc.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[zebs]

There are no cell towers in the ocean, as far as I know.

Apart from the ones that fell off the ship.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[cpu6502]

>>>10,000 is a tiny, infinitesimal fraction of..... 200,000,000 trips

99.995% reliability for shipping. Not bad. That's close to the reliability of phone service (five 9's).

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[StikyPad]

Which is probably also a drop in the bucket.

The real damage is marine cargo insurance, which is already scandalously high. Of course, if they're already charging 1-3% (and they are) with a loss rate of 0.005% (10k losses out of 200M shipments), then lowering the loss rate further probably isn't going to change much of anything.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Anonymous Coward]

Citation needed

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Darinbob]

The dirt will just turn into mud. We'd first have to pump all the water out.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[KUHurdler]

Good thinking. First we need to research waterproof dirt.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought that number (containers) would be higher. It feels like the NY/NJ port should hit that alone pretty quickly (but a quick look at their website indicates it's only about 5mil annually). Guess it's just the container graveyard that makes it seem so big.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[operagost]

Ignoring the fact that "unregulated capitalism" doesn't exist anywhere-- including Taiwan as in the incident recounted in this article-- Chinese shipping containers are also often lost. I assure you, their capitalism is regulated to the highest degree; however, their priorities differ from yours.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[SockPuppetOfTheWeek]

No problem, just pump it into the Grand Canyon.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[RazzleFrog]

I actually figured it wasn't something like that. I know they stripped down old NYC subway cars and used them to form a new reef.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[nedlohs]

They do float (I guess depending on what is in them, I'm not sure what their max weight and hence density is).

And hence other smaller ships hit them and sink.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[frosty_tsm]

Here's a pic of a container ship after going through rough seas: http://i.imgur.com/4ynah.jpg. I'm stunned that those containers are still on board. Looks like they're chained down, but even metal breaks eventually

That's kind of awesome. I feel like this belongs in a demotivation poster. Maybe "Sure, I could hack it together over the weekend" or "This is what your code will look like to the next developer."

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[KUHurdler]

great idea. Then we can sell lake-front condos.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Cramer]

Have you looked at a cargo container? They do not interlock. But they do fit together. Any interlocks are extra devices added to the pod, or it's carrier.

I've never seen a cargo ship with even one chain dogged down. Granted, they could throw chains on once at sea. The one I watched steam up the Cooper river in Charleston, SC a few weeks ago didn't have any chains anywhere. It would take some serious chains to hold an 80ft stack of pods in place.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[frosty_tsm]

Actual GPS is actually pretty cheap, but knowing where you are isn't very helpful unless you also have a way of telling someone where that is so that they can come pick you up. You need a radio or satellite transmitter that's capable of relaying your coordinates to someone who's on land, or at least a few hundred miles off. That's what makes it expensive, not so much the GPS portion of the device.

Sea-going, radio-based distress beacons are an established technology for boats of any size. My understanding is that they carry their signal pretty far, even if it is low-tech.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Anonymous Coward]

They take a very long time (days) to fill and finally sink, but 'float' from 3" to 3' below the water surface before they do. Hit one of them offshore in a sailboat or pleasureboat and you are in deep trouble.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actual GPS is not cheap. Cell tower "GPS" is cheap. There are no cell towers in the ocean, as far as I know.

GPS is cheap. Cell-phone towers have absolutely nothing to do with it.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Anonymous Coward]

The 15 biggest ships emit about as much sulphur oxide pollution as all cars combined.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[pz]

Here's a pic of a container ship after going through rough seas: http://i.imgur.com/4ynah.jpg. I'm stunned that those containers are still on board. Looks like they're chained down, but even metal breaks eventually

It appears that there are a few container missing, but holy tiedown, Batman, that's an extra heapload more robust than I would have thought. And imagining the seas that vessel must have endured makes me want to sit down immediately.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[a_nonamiss]

I believe you are incorrect. Sirf Star III and IV chipsets are less than $20 - $30. That's not cell tower GPS, that's real GPS. How else would you explain why my $70 Garmin Forerunner watch can provide me with longitude/latitude on an airplane or in the middle of an ocean? Of course, that's just the price of a chip. You need a power supply and some sort of transmitter to relay the data back to somewhere, but I'd imagine that they could purpose-design a system like this for well under a couple hundred dollars, when purchased in bulk. Considering a new shipping container costs around $2000, it doesn't sound too unreasonable. And it'll have benefits for the shipper as well. I'd imagine an average container could easily contain a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of merchandise. A single recovered container could pay for thousands of GPS systems.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[onepoint]

In my past, I was exporting in excess for my clients 2000 TEU's per week, the loss of a container was a very big issue for my client. lucky for me I had only one claim in my transport career. But with that said, the device that needs to be designed is rather simple. it's a beacon type, that when it turns 180 degrees it becomes active. I am rather sure that at one point of the entire process the containers beacon would trigger.

You get very wet while on the High Seas and it is normal when you are traveling around the world, the vessel pumps are dumping a rather huge amount during storms. so you really want the tracking device only to be activated while it's falling off the deck and rotating, I've seen vessels move 20 degrees or more due to wind and wave action, so you don't want beacons being activated without reason.

Just to think out loud, How would a signal transmit from 1000M below sea floor? I am guessing that it could transmit while it's still floating but afterwards as it's sinking, would it still work?

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Cramer]

Value after it's been soaking in seawater for a few days? Next to nothing. Scrape metal maybe. Rarely will you find water tight containers within the cargo pods. Even the cargo container itself wouldn't be in great shape after a few days in salt water.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Black Gold Alchemist]

SOx is not a greenhouse gas. It is, however, air pollution and acid rain.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[bye]

The 15 biggest ships emit about as much sulphur oxide pollution as all cars combined.

But that does not prove your point - sulphur oxide pollution is just a very small part of what cars emit: CO2 is the main greenhouse gas that cars emit, and US cars emit several orders of magnitude more CO2 than just 15 container ships ...

Nice trolling in any case.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Cramer]

Without government regulations and multi-million dollar lawsuits, we wouldn't. Cost-Benefit has cost many people's lives... because it's cheaper to settle than fix the problem.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[datapharmer]

The sad thing is that they *can* interlock. Most of these are intermodal shipping containers and have the ability to bolt together with a twist interlock. Unfortunately to save labor and shipping time, the companies moving them often don't bother to put the twist locks in and rely on gravity instead, which works... mostly. This isn't just the cargo shipping business not locking things down either. I've heard tale of freight train operators doing the same thing, which is a scary thought that I'm sure nobody would ever admit to unless they got caught.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Cramer]

Also note, only the level at deck level is tied down -- most ships stack *much* higher than the deck. And there appear to be no pins between the containers.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[operagost]

The article talks about the "real long term damage" it does to them-- which is nothing. And people who say, "if it saves only one little fishie" are even worse that the "think of the children" crowd.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[VanGarrett]

If you look at those two green containers on the far right, hanging in the air with nothing supporting them, I'd say they must be secured in some fashion, otherwise, they could not possibly be where they are. The containers on the left seem to be hanging in the air as well. That circumstance would be adequately explained with chains.

The ocean can be pretty rough. Clearly, the methods used to secure cargo are occasionally overcome.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[g0bshiTe]

Not to mention op stated "that a single large container ship emits as much greenhouse gasses in a day as all the cars in US do in a year", correct me if wrong but the citation states 15 of these ships equals that.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Lifyre]

http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=single+large+container+ship+emits+as+much+greenhouse+gasses+in+a+day+as+all+the+cars+in+US+do+in+a+year

Or since you've already proven you're lazy. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/apr/09/shipping-pollution or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_shipping#Exhaust_emissions

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[g0bshiTe]

I've worked at N.I.T. in VA and I assure you they are secured.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[citylivin]

Shippers really do NOT want to tell their customers, "We lost your cargo," and risk losing them to competitors.

I was under the impression that the way they write these kinds of transoceanic contracts is that you are actually responsible for your cargo. You are responsible for getting it insured, and you are responsible for the loss NOT the shipper. Amazing, but I do remember reading that from some research I did some time ago.

In that case, the shipper doesnt care one bit if your cargo makes it over. I also learned that you would never want to ship something priceless by sea (such as all your possessions in a move) because they basically say that they are not responsible - even if they totally are.

Unfortunately I cannot find any supporting links at this time.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[operagost]

Automobiles all had safety belts, air bags, and safety-oriented cabin designs before these features were mandated by governments. They just weren't in 100% of vehicles. That being said, reasonable regulation might actually be a good use of the "general welfare" clause, as long as those nanny regulations come directly from Congress or from departments created by Congress. Mind you, there are ridiculous misses, like the mandated seat belt ignition interlock that cost consumers and taxpayers millions to remove when the technology was proved unusable.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[kondor6c]

Most of them have a latches that allow the lifts to hook on to them. They are on all four corners. I imagine that they employ them some how. I'm sure if you stack them high enough and the boat starts rocking that the metal can bend/break and the containers will go over.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[g0bshiTe]

Not to mention is it worth a) causing the rest of the cargo to be delivered late, you can damn well bet that 1 ship carries multiple companies cargo per trip, and b) which is cheaper turning around for a cargo container wasting the time and fuel, or to have insurance reimburse the shipper for the cargo itself?

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[guruevi]

The problem is not necessarily the chips as you say yourself it's the communications. And those chips may be cheap but the amount of power required to send something from the bottom of the ocean is going to require a big battery.

Then you have the data transfer costs, satellite communications are not cheap. And then you still haven't recovered the item. Boats are not very efficient nor very fast and require a full crew. Deep-sea recovery takes weeks and is even more expensive not to say dangerous.

The US military doesn't even want to spend the resources to recover their nuclear missiles that are in known locations. Why would you think a container full of teddy bears, gym shoes or even iPads are worth the expense? Because even if you recover them, most likely they will not be functional, the cargo will be corroded or halfway eaten by the local population.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Anonymous Coward]

you're an asshole.

(just in case you didn't realize)

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Yvan256]

Comparing the loss of a metal box to the loss of a human life... how dumb.

Come on man, you can troll better than that!

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Chris Mattern]

Why don't they use chains or something to hold those bad boys down in choppy waters?

They do. Chains break, particularly when they're trying to tie down this much weight. We're talking tens of of thousands of tons, here.

Or, I don't know, built steel railings along the perimeters?

They do that, too. Once again, they break, particularly with this amount of weight (see above). Also, you can't as a practical matter erect railings high enough to hold in containers as high as they stack them.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[mehrotra.akash]

I was talking about those that floated

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[mehrotra.akash]

It is not so expensive..

Many cell phones > $200 have actual GPS

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[catmistake]

one giant container ship can emit almost the same amount of cancer and asthma-causing chemicals as 50m cars

Appears OP confused greenhouse gases with poison gases. Idiot. Looks like were OK then.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Anonymous Coward]

slap on a salt-water activated GPS, active radar blipper, AIS transmitter, and strobe light. I assume they are ballasted to float upright(?). small solar panel would do it. estimated cost ~ $500 per container, x10 million containers. just a matter of will.

slapping one on during a storm as they slip overboard doesn't seem realistic, so they'd have to be built in before-hand. maybe
just attach to topside containers before leaving port.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you mean? People do that to kids all the time. It's called divorce.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Anonymous Coward]

Using your sources, you're off by quite a bit. It says 15 of the worlds largest ships can, operating 280 days per year, put out the same pollution as 750 million cars. There are something like 250 million cars in the US. So that would be more like 5 of the worlds largest container ships, with the largest engines, over the course of a year, put out what all cars in the US produce.

Your point about them being absurdly bad for contributions of greenhouse gasses certainly stands though.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[morcego]

It is completely possible/practical to have zero downtime for a website. It just costs tons, and is usually not worth it (I'm talking telecom-level real redundancy here, including different brands of equipments etc).

It is also possible/practical to have zero loss transport. It just increases the cost exponentially. It is cheaper to pay insurance than to implement zero loss. Much cheaper. For both the transportation companies and their clients.

So, anyone who wants to demand zero loss would have to be willing to pay a big premium and, again, no one is.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Grizzley9]

I guess the good news is that they will mostly sink down into the muddy bottom and be out of the way.

Strangely most of them float, as ocean yachtsmen will testify; they're a serious hazard.

By serious hazard do you mean serious free treasure? Doesn't finders-keepers work in international waters? I realize the issue of towing back to a port and being able to salvage but it seems like it might be worth it in some cases.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about 2 thick I-beams that go vertically through the containers and latch directly to a support structure bound to the hull. Since it would require a new style of container, the shippers could charge special premium rates for guaranteed delivery.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[SnarfQuest]

They should train sharks to follow the shipping containers, or nail a fish to each container to attract sharks in case they fall into the water. At night, a shipping container lit up by numerous lasers would show up on satellite, and a retreival ship could be sent out to pick it up.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Duhavid]

This ignores the issues of what is in the container, how does it degrade with time and is it toxic or become toxic with time.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[interkin3tic]

Indeed, but they're starting to go slower for economic reasons, which dramatically reduces the pollution (source)

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[wiedzmin]

Not to mention op stated "that a single large container ship emits as much greenhouse gasses in a day as all the cars in US do in a year", correct me if wrong but the citation states 15 of these ships equals that.

You're wrong. The citation states that 15 ships equals all the cars in the world. Considering that out of 254 million vehicles in US, only 136 million are actually cars - it only takes 3 ships to pollute as much as all the cars in US.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[wiedzmin]

There are something like 250 million cars in the US

Technically there is only 136 million cars, 254 million is the number of all vehicles in US in 2007: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=number+of+vehicles+in+us

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[SnarfQuest]

Just nail a fish to each container. The sharks will then follow any lost container, and you can just use satellites to look for any container lit up by lasers. Much cheaper the GPS.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[toastar]

Just to think out loud, How would a signal transmit from 1000M below sea floor? I am guessing that it could transmit while it's still floating but afterwards as it's sinking, would it still work?

Easy just use a detachable SOFAR tethered buoy. Once the device sinks(pressure detector?) it releases the buoy that is designed in two parts, one part floats to the surface to get a GPS fix, the middle part stays in the sound channel. A better question is how you expect to keep your container at the bottom of the Marianas dry, and better yet how to recover it. Chasing floating containers might be worth it, But after they've been sunk, I don't think finding them would be the expensive part.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[wiedzmin]

You know what's ironic? Losing an entire container full of GPS units :)

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[wiedzmin]

Who cares about fishing out a container of anything that has salt water damage on it. Unless you're shipping something like gold bricks or bottles of alcohol - it's going to be useless after having spent a day or two in salt water.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[HuguesT]

No, the quoted numbers represent pollution in terms of SOx only. Cars in the US emit very little of those in the air, as this is the stuff the catalytic converter traps. However you will find that US cars emit a whole lot more CO2 than 3 or 15 ships. CO2 emission are also pollution.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[jmn2519]

He means serious hazard. Most of them ride really low in the water making them almost impossible to see - especially at night. Slamming into one of these can cause damage up to and including sinking your boat.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[X0563511]

I think the mass vs thrust of the vessel, and fuel constraints, might make that an issue. I suppose you could latch a transponder to it, note where it is and what the currents in that area do, and come back with something a bit more appropriate.

I'm pretty sure that it's considered like any other salvage. That would make sense anyways.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Finallyjoined!!!]

No. They float just under the surface & you can't see the buggers.
Also, try towing a square shaped, 20T dead weight behind your average yacht.
It's not going to happen.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Anonymous Coward]

It depends... ;-)

Say you want to send a container overseas. For that to happen, the container has to be picked up, brought to the harbor by a truck, loaded onto the ship, ferried over the high seas, unloaded, put unto another truck and delivered.

And, get this, you can insure and/or have any part of this journey handled, or if you're so inclined do it yourself.

For a handy overview, see Incoterm.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[X0563511]

Google for 'failboat' - you'll find plenty more (pre-captioned for you even!)

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Obfuscant]

it's a beacon type, that when it turns 180 degrees it becomes active.

So if the container ship has to turn back to port for mechanical failure or some other reason, all the beacons start going off as the ship makes a u-ee?

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[X0563511]

Something tells me that a GPS receiver ($30 for the chip, not too much for an antennae), a power supply, submersion detector, and transponder antennae and equipment is not all that expensive compared to the container or it's contents. Aside from the battery, it would be reusable as well.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[beckett]

i guess you don't use AT&T.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[beckett]

what if they're shipping a container of poison, or worse, mcdonalds burger patties?

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[networkBoy]

Cat doesn't do crap for NOx and SOx.
Cat oxidizes unburnt HC fuel, which is a much more potent smog generator than NOx/SOx and a bigger greenhouse gas than CO2.

NOx can be reduced by reduction of combustion temps, at an increase of unburnt HC fuel.
SOx requires that the fuel be low in sulfur to begin with. Not much of an issue with gasoline, but an issue with diesel and kerosene fuels.
-nB

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Demolition]

If you look at those two green containers on the far right, hanging in the air with nothing supporting them, I'd say they must be secured in some fashion, otherwise, they could not possibly be where they are. The containers on the left seem to be hanging in the air as well. That circumstance would be adequately explained with chains.

I worked at a container terminal while putting myself through university, many years ago. This is why those containers in the photo are still stuck together...

A device called an intermodal box connector (AKA "IBC", a hefty steel pin with a twistlock mechanism) is used to connect containers to each other. They fit into holes (four on the top, two on the bottom) on the corners of the container.

This is the usual method for loading and locking them together: A container is dropped onto a ship and locked down (via IBCs welded to the deck). Then, four IBCs are placed in the top holes of the container and another container is lowered. The IBCs slide into the four holes on the bottom of the new container and their twistlocks are turned. No chains are required. For extra safety, some companies erect a steel scaffold/frame around the outside of a block of containers to keep them from swaying in rough seas. Otherwise, the IBCs are the only things holding the containers together.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[X0563511]

GPS microchips (which, remember, often include a basic antennae) cost about $30 in single-unit quantities.

That's hardly expensive indeed! Peanuts considering!

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[mijelh]

It is completely possible/practical to have zero downtime for a website

It is not, and no sane engineer would agree with your statement. Accidents happen. You talk about redundancy, but even EC2 have been down. Heck, even Google have been down last year in part of the world. A chaos monkey can screw up your servers, or maybe a old lady just cuts your country off the internet

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[joebok]

As a percent, very small - but as an absolute number: wow, big. 10,000 shipping contains stacked on top of each other would be about 16 miles tall!

That so much is considered negligible as loss indicates just how much stuff is shipped - pretty amazing.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[YrWrstNtmr]

Anyone have a guess what the average value of the contents of a container is?

After it has soaked in the ocean for a week? Not much. The container can probably be cleaned up, but the contents? Not so much.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[cdrguru]

Look at it this way - today's "pollution" (stuff dropped in the ocean) is recycled to become natural resources over time. Yes, it is geologic time but if you insist on thinking short-term you may as well view evaporation of water as polluting the atmosphere.

Think how much fresh water we could save every year if we covered the Great Lakes in a thin layer of plastic to keep the water from evaporating!

Your average cargo container is 30-40 tons. Being conservative, let's say 30 tons or 60,000 pounds. They aren't watertight, so they fill up with water quickly and remaining floatation is because of the lighter-than-water contents, like TV sets in styrofoam. Dragging one of these through water would be extremely difficult, bordering on the impossible - the loading on the tow line would be more than 60,000 pounds and it would be impossible to attach such a tow line. So you are going to have to lift it. With the water in it the load weight might be as much as 100,000 pounds.

You are going to need a ship with a displacement of over 200,000 pounds or 100 tons to even begin to think about salvaging one of these. I suppose you could have another container ship with a lot of ballast and a big (50 ton) crane that could lift such a thing. It would have enough displacement to handle the weight but might not handle the off-center load. Heck, I'm not sure you could put a big enough crane on a WWII aircraft carrier to lift such a thing without capsizing the ship.

Ships aren't made to lift such things. You might be able to custom-design something like a huge catamaran to sit over the container and lift it but nobody is that interested. It would have to be a huge ship and very expensive to build. Not to mention roaming the oceans looking for dropped containers. Just the fuel cost alone would zero out the salvage from one container, assuming it was salvagable anyway.

Just how much are waterlogged TV sets worth these days, anyway? Or iPads? Books? Magazines? Nope, I don't think anyone is all that interested in recovering this stuff. They just want it to sink out of sight.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[LordSnooty]

cool, 5,000 soiled teddy bears and 10 grand of unusable electrical equipment!

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[cdrguru]

Eventually, it will be dragged into a subduction and mixed with a million tons of lava. New ores for someone to mine in a million years or so.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[onepoint]

Funny. I meant upside down

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[jlar]

Time is money. It takes time to tie down shipping containers. And ship time is _expensive_. So if the weather forecasts show calm weather it is an acceptable risk to take.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[onepoint]

Well that's what I'm thinking, surface containers can be caught, secured and towed onto shore rather quickly and cheaply ( some sort of simple inflatable balloons ). 200 miles or less from a port, you could get to it in 12 hours. of the weather is good. What a lot of people don't see is that the container itself is worth about 1000.00, it only broke free and fell, if it did not sink, then it's in decent shape. then I got the cargo, I could get anywhere from 10% to 50% of the value form the insurance company. so the worst case is I get fuel covered. best case is I find recyclable goods.

One thing I have going for me is that top cargo on large teu ship ( 5000 TEU's + ) have the lightest cargo on top. those take a while to sink so there is a good chance that I might be able to make some change.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Anonymous Coward]

drop in the ocean

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[GreenTom]

Does look like they lost a few...if they started stacked 6 high, the bottom one on the left got lost. And look at the ones at the bottom right, they just got smushed like empty beer cans. Love the idea of using this as a demotivation poster.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[couchslug]

"Why don't they use chains or something to hold those bad boys down in choppy waters? Or, I don't know, built steel railings along the perimeters? Or inter-locking Lego-like attachments between containers?"

Christ's Bleeding Balls!!!
Um, I mean "Here you go:"

http://tinyurl.com/3oylnou

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[HornWumpus]

If it can be traced back to you, you better care about any hazards to navigation you are creating in shipping lanes.

I'm surprised the shippers haven't paid out big bucks for loss of life. Tough to prove. Needs a survivor and an identifiable shipping container. Plus they will claim 'act of god'.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely. And all of use will be so mixed also, in time. I submit we do care what happens in the mean time.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[tompaulco]

How would a signal transmit from 1000M below sea floor?
You would probably need to use very low frequencies and very high power.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[tompaulco]

I'm pretty sure you are mixing your percentages. The insurance rate is undoubtedly based on the value of the contents, and the .0005% is based on the number of pods lost.
You are undoubtedly correct that the insurance company charges far more than they stand to lose. That is how an insurance company makes money. If it is that big an issue to you, you are free to self-insure, and just live with the loss. The only reason to use insurance at all is if you feel that the chance of a loss being greater than your ability to absorb justifies the overhead cost of purchasing insurance.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[tompaulco]

I propose that we fill the ocean with dirt, and then drive our cargo across on trucks.
That's a lot of dirt. I think it would be wiser just to wait until the ocean is full of shipping containers and then just fill in the spaces between the containers.
How about a giant floating conveyor belt system?

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[gmhowell]

as vehicles become safer, drivers in general are more comfortable and feel safer to the point that they drive more recklessly

Insightful comment, except for the fact that you are dead wrong.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Anonymous Coward]

So they lock them vertically only? What about horizontally? http://i.imgur.com/4ynah.jpg is a great example of why locking vertically only is an issue. The swell has swayed that lot amazingly hard to the side (and of course up and down). Cable guy ties are pretty much useless here imho. Notably you can tell they are interlocked vertically but not horizontally.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[IICV]

Wow, 10,000? Why don't they use chains or something to hold those bad boys down in choppy waters? Or, I don't know, built steel railings along the perimeters? Or inter-locking Lego-like attachments between containers?

Wow, you have no sense of the scale of modern commerce, do you?

Probably millions of these shipping containers are tossed around the world each year. If you do the math, I'm sure that 10,000 losses per year works out to be something much less than 1% of the total number of shipping containers that set out from port.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[onepoint]

this is a very interesting question.
a container i good shape that is still within ISO spec's is worth 2400 new, used abut 1000 to 1500 range. container repair is a big business in Asia so steamship lines will buy them..

Cargo wise, in the summer, the USA east coast export to Europe, and the other way around is House hold goods ( light containers can be stacked to the max level ), so you want to think light density products, that don't suffer with heat exposure ( containers can get to 120F or hotter in the summer )

Auto filters, tires, light bulbs, sneakers, tea shirts, blue jeans, air craft machinery, stuff like that. If your lucky you'll get motor cycles, since they don't pack it so tight.

a lot of this stuff is an easy claim to the insurance company, just call them after you have the container number, tell them you found it, file the proper paperwork and you get a percentage of the cargo's value if the want it, or you get the entire cargo if they don't. and you'll get a payout for the container also.

the problem in the recovery is location of the container, if it's sunk, you got to find a way to get the container up, good thing is that if you can get a hook on the corners, you can haul it up with inflatable bags, a winch might strain itself too much.

High sea's recovery is very expensive, boat time can run you into multiple 1000's per day.

best thing is to learn the shipping lanes, get copies of lost cargo reports, and work the area's that have the highest density vessels and claims when there is a storm. I once research the lane from miami to new york, rather nice scattering 20 to 40 miles off shore but the odds of diving in the right spot are nil. I would need a powerful metal detector to find them.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[toddestan]

Or just go straight to the source: The Gallery of Transport Loss.

Terrible website design, but fascinating content and pictures of various transport mishaps.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[sonamchauhan]

in fact, the shippers should get paid for conferring such benefits to the seabed!

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[dbIII]

In the 1970s there was a major move to get the sulphur out of refined fuel and to cut the SOx emmissions from coal fired power stations - the USA has a lot of sulphur in the fossil fuels due to the conditions when the deposits were laid down. That's why cars don't put out a lot of SOx. I'm not sure what the rules are with fuel oil as burnt in ships.

Other places that don't care as much about sulphur oxides forming acid in the air don't actually have very much sulphur in their oil and coal. Oxides of nitrogen are a different story and are a problem in every place where a lot of stuff is burnt without decent pollution control.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[dbIII]

Sulphur in fuel actually damages the catalytic converters and that's yet another reason for it to be removed in the refining process.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[StikyPad]

1) The rate of cargo loss is independent of whether or not it was insured, therefore if N percent of all goods are lost, it's reasonable to assume the same N percent of insured goods are lost. In fact, if the loss rate differed substantially from the norm, that would be a solid indication of fraud. The value is largely irrelevant since the insurance fee is calculated proportional to value, not at a fixed rate, so it corrects for variations in the value of a given shipment. Of course there's always the possibility of the "black swan," but insurers are free to determine how much risk they'll take on.

2) Yes, I understand how insurance works. I'm saying that the cost for marine cargo insurance is disproportionate to the risk when compared to other industries. E.g., my car insurance for 1 year is roughly the same as marine cargo insurance for 1 voyage, despite *far* higher risks of totaling my vehicle than losing a shipment.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Serious hazard" more like "sweet reward" (once you find out the container is filled with delicious candy).

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[dwywit]

IIRC the latest standards require them to have water-soluble plugs in them, that take ~3 days to dissolve, i.e. you've got 3 days to locate and retrieve your "lost" container, otherwise it will fill and sink to reduce the shipping hazard.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[bill_mcgonigle]

reasonable regulation might actually be a good use of the "general welfare" clause,

The rest of Article 1 Section 8 wasn't meant as an "EXAMPLES" section.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[st0nes]

Wow, 10,000? Why don't they use chains or something to hold those bad boys down in choppy waters? Or, I don't know, built steel railings along the perimeters? Or inter-locking Lego-like attachments between containers?

They do. The two lower tiers are held down either by chains and turnbuckles or lashing bars; subsequent tiers are secured to the lower tiers by twist locks. These things don't fall overboard in "choppy" waters--they fall overboard in much worse sea conditions. Wave heights in force 12 can reach 60' (~20m) and no stabilizers can deal with the violent movement of the ship in those conditions. Weather routing is improving all the time, though, so ships find themselves in those conditions far more seldom.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shoot a GPS tracking beacon at it, and proceed with your own business.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Anonymous Coward]

So this is how Pentagon lost 2.3 trillion USD prior to 9/11 and +6.6 billion USD when it was shipped to Iraq.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[sznupi]

I wouldn't be too surprised if there is a "guaranteed"* delivery of sorts already; it's enough to direct certain containers below deck, *as long as the ship doesn't sink, etc. (and if a ship is in a condition where the container stacks are starting to overturn, it's possibly better for it to lose some on the tilt side)

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Sardaukar86]

The Gallery of Transport Loss. Terrible website design, but fascinating content and pictures of various transport mishaps.

Jesus motherloving Christ, you weren't joking about their webshite. That twitching, flashing, jumping monstrosity is just about un-navigable.

A fascinating insight into another person's mind.. a diseased mind, that is. Most incredible of all; someone (somewhere) is happy with these.. pages. It never ceases to amaze me how the truly stupid think. However, I'd rather read /. posts than wade through that eye-gravel no matter how pretty the pictures, thanks anyway. :)

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[drinkypoo]

In a car accident you have the opportunity to maybe kill a few people and destroy a few tens of thousands of dollars worth of property. In a container ship accident you could potentially kill many, many people (hit a cruise ship) and the potential for monetary damage is orders of magnitude greater as well. I don't know what the actual costs are, but your description doesn't sound unreasonable to me.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[danhaas]

I would tie it to the hull, with some big tires in between to absorb shock. A crane big enough to lift a container out of the water wouldn't be cheap nor would it fit in small boats.
You could carry a nice number of containers with a system like that, maybe using a tandem scheme. This would be dangerous in a storm, but you can always cut loose and hunt down those containers again after the storm.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[tompaulco]

I'm saying that the cost for marine cargo insurance is disproportionate to the risk when compared to other industries.
If they are so disproportionate to the risk, then why does anybody who has any kind of volume use them? Clearly it is cheaper to self insure. Maybe I could see a family moving their stuff in a container buying the insurance, because they can't afford to replace everything in the .005% chance that something happens, but any real shipper could easily absorb the losses at a 2000:1 insurance ratio.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure the waves on the Cooper aren't nearly as big as the ones on the Atlantic!

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Lifyre]

Yeah, I actually didn't verify his numbers I was just putting up sources. These shipping vessels use 400 kilowatts to as much as 8 megawatts of power while in port depending on their size. There is some work to putting solar panels on the ships but I think they're producing maybe 10% of that from non diesel/fuel oil sources on the best ships right now.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[kmoser]

A smarter idea would be to fit them all with radio transmitters. That way owners (or anybody with a suitably tuned receiver) could find and retrieve them more quickly.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[a_nonamiss]

A car battery at full retail costs $50. I'd imagine you could tweak it a bit, put it in a waterproof container and have something that could power a very powerful signal for weeks. Don't have to worry so much about satellites, as transmitters on the right frequency could transmit hundreds, if not thousands, of miles. We're not transmitting complex data here, just some GPS coordinates repeated. Also, I was referring more to the containers that float, which is a majority of them. Some salvage and rescue operations could be done on the sinkers, but many of those (depending on contents) would not be worth salvaging even if their location was known.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[SockPuppetOfTheWeek]

Well, that was sort of the point - the GPS isn't really that expensive (and buying a few thousand at a time would be cheaper still), relatively speaking. Most of the expense will actually be the rest of what's necessary... the power supply will probably be the most costly, followed by the radio equipment that's intended to transmit the location. The GPS itself is just a radio receiver, which will be low-power and relatively inexpensive.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Grizzley9]

cool, 5,000 soiled teddy bears and 10 grand of unusable electrical equipment!

Rare metals in electronics may be worth it. As would trying to salvage stuff that had some water damage. I'm just surprised a cheap GPS type transponder isn't attached to make finding/tracking that much easier.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Demolition]

They fit into holes (four on the top, two on the bottom) on the corners of the container.

I just re-read my post and noticed an error. It should read "four on the top, four on the bottom".

Originally, I was trying to decide whether to write "two pairs of holes" on the tops and bottoms of the containers and only managed to confuse myself! :-)

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[Anonymous Coward]

thought they had fitted them with water soluble plugs exactly to avoid that

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[operagost]

No, it wasn't. It was a specific enumeration of powers, clarified by the tenth amendment. I don't know what you mean by that, as the only specific enumeration that MIGHT apply is the oft-abused "interstate commerce" clause-- which I will always assert does NOT mean Congress gets to regulate something just because it MIGHT affect interstate commerce.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[bill_mcgonigle]

You cited the "general welfare" clause to support creating regulations. The meaning of the clause isn't "whatever is good, in general" as an enumerated power, but rather, "exercises of power must support the general welfare, not any specific group or groups' welfare". It's not carte blanche to regulate, it's a restriction on the power to tax.

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[onepoint]

OK, In my past I moved cargo on vessels all the time, up to 2000 TEU's at a clip, here is the trick to get extra coverage.
a bill of lading ( that's the cargo receipt for all intensive purposes ) has a column that states number of packages. fill that out to say 20 boxes instead of saying 1x20ft container, what you just did was transfer the liability of 1 container box that's insured for 500.00 ( the line will cover 500 due to legal rules ) to 20 boxes being insured for 500 each. simple and effective.

will it work, most of the time yes, but sometimes that steamship line will say no.

As for reporting to a customer that they lost the cargo, if you move volume, that's something that they will break a relationship for. NO one wants to hear of losses and in a JIT ( just in time ) environment, it could be very costly. It happened to a customer of mine, a container went over, cargo sank to the bottom. had to charter air freight to keep his plant running. from that day forward, he became my best client, I did not loose the cargo, another carrier did, but what we created for the client was a way to get the fast containers always in JIT and have a container on a slow boat that would show up off cycle ever 9 weeks, what it provided for him was insurance, peace of mind, and a container taking up little space in my warehouse for a few weeks ( he would send a guy with a pick-up to get a supplies when he got tight on supplies.

I would rather ship with a slower carrier that would put my cargo underdeck for 25.00 per container than being above deck. No one wants too report that container is lost, you can kiss the client goodbye

Lost vs. "Lost"

[Anonymous Coward]

I have no that that a large number of cargo containers really do fall off during bad weather or whatever, but I wonder what percentage of that 10,000 are lost at sea vs. "lost at sea" while the dock workers look the other way.

Re:Lost vs. "Lost"

[0123456]

I have no that that a large number of cargo containers really do fall off during bad weather or whatever, but I wonder what percentage of that 10,000 are lost at sea vs. "lost at sea" while the dock workers look the other way.

While some of the contents of my shipping container mysteriously vanished on the way across the Atlantic, I can't help but feel that someone is going to notice if a dock worker tries to drive out of the docks with a forty-foot container sticking out of the trunk of their car.

Re:Lost vs. "Lost"

[StikyPad]

Indeed. And even if the shipping companies didn't care, there's the whole customs thing -- most oceanic freight is international, not intra-national. Even though customs is a joke, it would be sort of difficult to claim that a container was lost at sea after it cleared customs.

Re:Lost vs. "Lost"

[TWX]

Just because it came off of the ship doesn't mean the Customs ever got notified that it's in the yard. It's even possible that, *gasp!* people with rather high dollar interests managed to find a way to bribe officials to let a truck or two out without documentation, or to forge documentation that made it look legitimate.

Consider these container ship pictures and the number of containers present, then consider that there are a lot more than one ship's container load in a dockyard, and that containers can be loaded on to rail, tractor trailer, or on to other ships, and in some places can probably be manually emptied. There's probably a whole railyard in the area, and a large fleet of tractor trailers. It's probable that they genuinely lose stuff in the yard without meaning to, and that some stuff that hasn't cleared customs genuinely gets accidentally loaded for outbound shipping. Further consider how much of what we buy comes in from overseas (almost all TVs and other consumer electronics, most small appliances, some large appliances, lots of cheap tools and equipment, most of our furniture, most of our clothing, lots of food, etc) it's no wonder there's real worry that our shipping is the next target for attack.

If you want to fix all of this, the simple solution is to upgrade the security at the ports to the point that the speed of the non-security setup we currently have is maintained, and factor that cost into the cost to ship. That could mean 100x the number of personnel, billions of dollars in equipment, and probably new legislation to get it to happen, but it'll have a few benefits- first, one reduces the "lost" container problem, as it's much harder to bribe the necessary number of officials when there are many more officials paying attention. Second, it reduces the real possibility of an attack, as suddenly containers get the scrutiny that they should. Third, if the real cost to pay for all of this gets built into the price of the good, suddenly foreign goods are much more expensive than they were relative to domestic goods, which benefits our domestic economy and is difficult to label as an unfair tariff as it's just forcing importers to pay for the real security costs to import.

Re:Lost vs. "Lost"

[onepoint]

it's rather simple, the way a container get's lost is ...
a) declared not lifted by the crane operator and marks his list showing that he lifted only 1 less than what he really lifted.
b) that container is placed on a truck, and stacked near the empties.
c) wait for the late gate to be opened one day, and have a yard hauler move it over to someone warehouse. ( the late gate is not
that effective in counting containers leaving the port, that gate is good for last minute cargo that has to make it to the vessel or export.)
d) unload container
e) give the container to a buddy at the scrap yard he grinds it and it's gone.

I once lost a container at the port. I was warned that once I was at the port, I might not make it back ( containers do fall, even on windless days ),
so I went to the port with a few people, paid a union man to drive me around and stick to my side like butter on bread ( ever see a union port worker nervous )
and by pot luck found my container. What they did not know at that time is that I was renting P&O and Cast Line containers for redeliver back to china, so these containers were blue, rather easy to see, and I quickly found it. the export cargo was worth in excess of 400K and I did not want this customer to go to another shipper.

Re:Lost vs. "Lost"

[StikyPad]

You've been watching too many movies.

Is it possible? Of course, anything's possible. But it's much less work to just empty the container later than to claim it was lost at sea. Your cockamamie scheme just makes things more difficult than they need to be for no reason AND raises the odds of getting caught. What if that customs agent is just pretending to go along? What if a supervisor happens to do an inspection? What if the container has a GPS tracker inside, which any container of significant value would?

Now I'm not saying that what you describe had *never* happened, but I'd wager heavily it's not an epidemic.

Re:Lost vs. "Lost"

[DarkOx]

Very good point but I imagine if say you had a crew on the take, a few containers could get offloaded to a smaller pirate vessal while at sea. Such a vessal by virtue of being smaller might not have to dock at busy port with a customs authroirty. They could emty out the container fence the goods and dumpt the empty containers back at sea. Then send the conainter ship crew their cut via WU, or other wire service, and finally do it all again next week.

Re:Lost vs. "Lost"

[TWX]

I just pulled up the information for the Port of Los Angeles (San Pedro). They averaged 140 million metric revenue tons through the port. Being pessimistic and assuming that the weight of the container itself factors into a metric revenue ton, and assuming for this thought exercise that every shipping container is loaded to maximum weight, I still come up with over 4,615,000 containers through the Port of LA alone in a year. At one port, not accounting for light containers.

Are you trying to tell me that Customs is opening and inspecting 4,615,000 containers in LA? Are you somehow implying that they can keep track of everything, or that they're somehow able to even keep their heads above water?

Re:Lost vs. "Lost"

[IdolizingStewie]

How exactly do you propose they move one of these containers while at sea? The force?

Re:Lost vs. "Lost"

[HornWumpus]

I know a man who buys 'lost' containers from the port of Oakland.

I didn't believe him as it seemed preposterous that they could not track down the owner or a shipping container/contents. The owners name is right on the box along with a serial#.

I believe him now. I've seen his yard (you need a destination for the containers). Port computer system must be a cluster hog (going to say pig but it's the bay area) fuck from hell.

Average winning bid for a lost shipping container $50,000. Blind. All you know is gross weight and that somebody was paying at least $2000 to ship the stuff. Worst case for him was a breakeven. Best case was a container full of industrial shrink wrap rolls. Middle was marble tiles.

I can't get the location and dates out of the dude. Port of Oakland web sight was a mess last I looked. I think the sale is actually from an operator. It's an old boys network as far as I can tell. Liable to get your tires cut just showing up uninvited.

Re:Lost vs. "Lost"

[tompaulco]

How small of a pirate vessel and wouldn't the fact that it had a 30 ton crane on it be a little obvious?

A note to outsiders:

[Anonymous Coward]

I fink 10000 containers will fill up to the brim the whole Monterey Bay including National Marine Sanctuary.

Re:A note to outsiders:

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever been there? Evidently not. According to Wiki the sanctuary is about 6000 square miles so yeah, average less than two containers per square mile. Hardly "filled to the brim". The bay is pretty frickin big too.

Re:A note to outsiders:

[Anonymous Coward]

6000 square miles and knee deep.
I live nearby and I occasionally fish and dive in the bay.
I rarely see my lines go deeper 50-100 feet down.

Re:Can't they tie them down? - Not gonna help...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm, they do interlock using locking pins - so in normal rough-and-tumble they stay together... that doesn't do diddly when the ship lists 45 degrees and then you get side to side rolling of the deck - those locking pins sheer off, and away they go. Ropes and railing won't really help that much, either. Plus, if you DID keep them all together, and fastened to the deck - you'd risk capsizing the cargo container ship, and sending the whole mess to the bottom of the ocean. Better to lose a container or two - and claim it on insurance.

Losses...

[Anonymous Coward]

Due to "piracy"? That's how the *IAA and SBA account for those huge piracy numbers!

Future shock

[frisket]

Marine archaeologists of the future are going to have a ball examining all these boxes on the seabed.

"We believe that late 20th century humans had a variety of cults, worshipping (among other totems) rubber models of ducks and some strange-looking footwear..."

Re:Future shock

[HeckRuler]

and some strange-looking footwear..."

Well they're right about half the populous.

Re:Future shock

[treeves]

Populous is an adjective, not a noun.
The word you sought was populace.

Re:Future shock

[Anonymous Coward]

No, Populous is also a proper noun.
Just not what GP thought.

Re:Future shock

[cthulhu11]

Indeed, the sad millions who mistake flip-flops for decent footwear.

Re:Future shock

[cyclomedia]

I thought he was referring to the Späsmodica

Really lost? I wonder.

[hilldog]

Considering the huge opportunity for graft I wonder how many containers are simply off loaded at sea to other vessels and reported lost? Insurance covers the loss for the owners of the containers and the crew makes a killing.

Re:Really lost? I wonder.

[kidgenius]

Transferring isn't really viable. These ships don't have cranes on em. How in the world would you, at sea, pluck a container from the top of the stack and move it to another boat? Helicopter? That's a logistical and economical nightmare for a couple of containers....

Re:Really lost? I wonder.

[2names]

"How in the world would you, at sea, pluck a container from the top of the stack and move it to another boat?"

You don't. You let one that floats "fall" off the ship and smaller ships collect just the contents, not the container.

Re:Really lost? I wonder.

[Anonymous Psychopath]

Considering the huge opportunity for graft I wonder how many containers are simply off loaded at sea to other vessels and reported lost? Insurance covers the loss for the owners of the containers and the crew makes a killing.

Losing a container is a very rare event, even though the number seems large. Practical problems aside, it would be very obvious if this sort of thing were happening. That's assuming none of 50 people involved never talked about it.

Re:Really lost? I wonder.

[gblackwo]

And how do you propose just letting one "fall" off? Are you suggesting that one of the crew repel up the cargo to somehow release the pins to a container, and then what? Have the captain create a large enough list for it to fall off?

Are you serious?

Re:Really lost? I wonder.

[Anonymous Coward]

More likely that some of the lost containers were never actually loaded on a ship.

Re:Really lost? I wonder.

[Anonymous Coward]

Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the Earth.
-Archimedes

Re:Really lost? I wonder.

[elsurexiste]

It doesn't matter how much the insurer pays, you'll still piss off the owner, since almost all containers are leased.

Re:Really lost? I wonder.

[Anonymous Coward]

By having a crane on the second ship?

Re:Really lost? I wonder.

[HeckRuler]

Other then the act of repelling being a downward action, yeah, something like that.
Climb up, unbolt, push off. Or simply wait for a storm to knock it off for you.

It would be even simpler to open the container and take all the goodies below deck first. That way it's lighter for the storm to abscond with the evidence and you don't need a buddy with a boat.
It's theft, not rocket science.

Re:Really lost? I wonder.

[RussR42]

Well, if you wait for the storm the other guys would have to recover the contents in a storm. Have fun with that. Oh, and I think it would be the contents of the can that make it float, so trying to remove them while it's in the water could be a problem.

I like your plan best, empty it first then dump the can. Also, there are container ships that DO have cranes and can load and unload any where. Plenty of ports still want cans but for a variety of reasons don't have the shore based infrastructure. I've also seen these rig tenders that are small vessels and can lash a couple containers on deck. You could put the two together...

Re:Really lost? I wonder.

[RussR42]

A link posted further down the thread shows a ship with cranes. From here. and thanks to k6mfw for the funny post.

Re:Really lost? I wonder.

[dbIII]

A few years back a container ship got stuck on a beach near me and they took some containers off by Chinook so it could get refloated. Even in good weather they had to drop a few when things did not go entirely to plan. Apparently it's not as easy as it looks and it's a good way to lose a helicopter.

Just more junk on the seafloor

[Isaac-1]

This reminds me of a photograph a friend of mine showed me years ago from a dive trip to the Red Sea. While there on a dive at a random site (live aboard dive boat), they ran across a contrainer on the bottom in about 80 feet of water that had broken open, of all the possible treasures it might have contained it was full of toilets. The photo showed a diver sitting on an upright one in the pile of toilets.

Re:Just more junk on the seafloor

[LanMan04]

Tada!!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/17685394@N04/1847030233/

That's a lot of toilets...

Re:Just more junk on the seafloor

[elrous0]

Nope, that's a crapload of toilets!

Re:Just more junk on the seafloor

[Anonymous Coward]

I was reading this thread and thought the picture looked very familiar, then I realized it was mine ;) The dive site is Shark/Yolanda reef, a well-known and very popular dive spot in the Red Sea. It was not just a container that went down there, but the entire ship (the "Yolanda").

Re:Just more junk on the seafloor

[u38cg]

I once saw a container fall off a ship. It was full of drum-kits.

Ba-dum tshhh

Re:Just more junk on the seafloor

[Anonymous Coward]

Ba-dum SPLASH, you mean.

Enviromental Impact of Study

[Anonymous Coward]

Next they can do an environmental impact of the study that studied the lost container.
How much fossil fuel was used by the sub going down there to get samples.
How much damage did the sub do by disturbing the site.
How many trees were used to print the journal the research was published in.

I see a theoretical grey market here

[DemonGenius]

I'm stretching the definition of grey as much as possible here. Anyone with the right resources could probably travel through these shipping routes and reclaim these lost shipping containers. If none of the contents get damaged, then they could probably be sold on the grey market since the manufacturers have probably already scratched these off their records already as losses. Only flaw here is that the cost of doing business would outweigh the profits generated from selling the goods, if they even happen to be undamaged. Also, any competition here would make this business unfeasible and possibly very bloody.

Re:I see a theoretical grey market here

[swanzilla]

Also, any competition here would make this business unfeasible and possibly very bloody.

Shedding blood for a trove of sweatpants does not a good pirate make.

Re:I see a theoretical grey market here

[ledow]

Just how much money do you think you can make out of some sunken, waterlogged, extremely heavy rusted steel box, lodged underwater at great depth, in potentially treacherous conditions, on a major shipping lane, which contains mostly sea-salt and water-corroded goods which were packaged in things only slightly better than you see on your local shop shelves?

It would cost more to *find* them and raise them than it would to just buy a whole new container of brand new equivalent goods - or else they WOULDN'T be down there still.

Re:I see a theoretical grey market here

[DemonGenius]

Did you even read my post? I already said in different words what you said, plus I called this "theoretical".

Only flaw here is that the cost of doing business would outweigh the profits generated from selling the goods, if they even happen to be undamaged.

Of course most of the goods would be water damaged and corroded and there would be no feasible way of determining which containers have goods with water-tight packaging (those exist, you know). Anyone observant enough to read between the lines could tell that I was calling this stupid, but we're human beings and not exactly stupid-proof. We're bound to see someone try to reclaim these containers, heck, there's already people doing studies to explore them as this article implies.

I guess not reading TFA is considered passe and not reading TFC is the new chic.

Just think...

[Anonymous Coward]

There is probably a large container full of Colecos sitting, waiting to be discovered and put up on eBay.

Re:Just think...

[gmhowell]

There is probably a large container full of Colecos sitting, waiting to be discovered and put up on eBay.

I'll get to that as soon as I finish digging up this treasure trove of Atari 2600 PacMan cartridges.

cargo lost gallery

[k6mfw]

Wasn't there a similar post about cargo lost? I bookmarked this page on "Gallery of Transport Loss -- Photos & Lessons of Disaster" at http://www.cargolaw.com/gallery.html and oh man are there zillions of photos of all kinds of transport accidents. Some cargo damaged at ports but the amount lost at sea is staggering! Though be careful as this site is interesting and can become a huge timepit surfing through all the pics.

All kinds of disasters including "Meals Ready to Explode" (ya know all them MREs with water activated heaters, what about containers filled with MREs with their heaters and water gets inside), http://www.cargolaw.com/2001nightmare_mre2.html

Here's an interesting mention from the cargolaw webpage:
"We are frequently asked the question: Do Containers Float? Why yes, they do -- at least for a while depending upon the container age, whether there are holes and the volume of air within the stow. There are many documented cases of partially submerged containers -- floating just at the surface which have been hazards to navigation. In Year 2000 the entire crew of the F/V Solway Harvester fishing trawler perished when their vessel struck a partially submerged container in the North Sea -- laden with mayonnaise. You probably have never considered mayonnaise to be dangerous. "

Loading order

[jklovanc]

The article should really look a bit into why container ships are loaded the way they are. The article contends, with no fact to support this contention, that one of the issue is that heavy containers that are loaded high on the sip are a major cause of the issue. Their solution is to load heavy containers first. Lets look into what would be required to do this feat.

1a. Every time a container come it it would be sorted by size so that the large one would be easily accessed first.
    Issues:
            containers come in one at a time over quite a long period of time. what happens if many light ones come after all the heavy ones? The heavy ones get burried.
1b. Alternately, sort the containers before they are loaded.
        This would require more space and handling each container at least one additional time.

Lets assume that all the heavy containers are in the bottom of the ship. The article neglects the fact that container ships usually make more than one offloading stop. They are currently loaded so that the containers can be unloaded at each stop while still maintaining the balance of the ship. If the heavy containers are at the bottom, it would require unloading containers above the heavy containers, unloading the heavy containers and re-loading the light containers. This takes time and space.

Every minute a container ship is tied up at a dock costs money. The sorting and excess loading/unloading take time. Most ports are also very crowded and do not have the space required to do the sorting of containers to make sure heavy containers are loaded lower. There is also a limited number of berths for container ships. The longer a ship is in port means fewer ships can be loaded and unloaded by that port.

One final point, everything breaks. Even light containers go overboard. A perfect example is the container full of tires. Compared to shipments such as metals, tires are relatively light but a container full of them still went overboard. Given rough enough water even an empty container can break loose.

Here are some of the parameters that container loading software uses to place containers on a ship.
        the weight of each container being handled
        which port each container will be unloaded at
        if the container is refrigerated, and needs to be plugged in during the voyage
        if the container’s contents are hazardous, as these could be potentially explosive if placed next to a refrigerated container
        advising Customs of the ship’s arrival and reporting the cargo on board
        the order in which the containers will be loaded and unloaded.
A lot of science goes into the efficient loading and unloading of containers; sorting by weight is taken into account but not the overriding consideration.

Re:Loading order

[Anonymous Coward]

They might be able to put the heavy one in the front and rear of the boat. Or create a rainproof vent, that would allow seawater in so it would sink. Or if you want them to float, have the shipping companies buy EIPRBs for each contain while in transit, so they can be recovered by a different ship.

Re:Loading order

[Anonymous Coward]

To add to the above, another factor is roll period. Ship operators refer to ships as being either "stiff" or "tender". When a ship is very stable it will have a short roll period and is referred to as being "stiff". When it is not so stable it will have a longer roll period and be referred to as "tender". If you load all your heavy cargo low, the vessel will tend to be too stiff. The effect of this is that when the vessel is caused to roll by heavy seas, it will whip back upright quickly. Cargo high in the stacks will be then subjected to very high accelerations. This can cause damage.

Consequently, ship operators carefully calculate where to place cargo, and what ballast to add or pump out, to try to achieve a ship that is neither so tender as to roll over, nor so stiff as to create damaging righting forces.

Re:Loading order

[Anonymous Coward]

Orrrr.....you could just not stack the containers above the level of the upper deck. 10,000 containers per annum is actually an awful lot of pollution and hazards to navigation, and they are all in the ocean because of greed. Maritime regulations should prevent stacking them so high, they shouldn't be allowed to leave port in that condition and the shipping companies should make a bit less profit (and yes, I should pay a few cents extra for my LCD screen). Problem solved!

Recycle Containers

[Anonymous Coward]

A little off topic, but one of the things I find fascinating is that China manufactures cargo containers to ship goods to the US. The US does not ship the empties back to China because it costs too much. Instead, the US melts them down and recycles the metal.

Re:Recycle Containers

[couchslug]

The US sells many of them locally. ISO containers make great small shop buildings.

I have two 40' High Cubes, the extra ceiling height is nice) and a conventional 20'. Easy to move, easy to set, easy to work with.
Gasketed weatherproof storage is great, they are easy to fit with power and light, and white roof coating drops inside temps nicely.

Re:Recycle Containers

[drinkypoo]

Can I ask how much you paid for containers and shipping? It's remarkably difficult to find real-world examples of what people have paid for this service.

My pickup ought to be able to move empty ones, even legally, with a sufficiently light trailer...

Re:Recycle Containers

[SleazyRidr]

Well that's probably a result of the US not manufacturing as much as China. If we could fill them up we'd send them back, but sending them back empty is just a waste of fuel.

Re:Recycle Containers

[SleazyRidr]

Of course, I just realized that the ship has to go back anyway, calling myself stupid, so no-one else has to...

Question

[Anonymous Coward]

A question for someone involved with Asia <--> N.American shipping. What are the containers filled with when headed back to China et al? Are they largely empty? Filled with scrap material for 'recycling'?

Re:Question

[Anonymous Coward]

The US does not ship empties back to Asia because that would be too expensive.
The US simply recycles them for scrap metal.

immigrants in a shipping container

[peter303]

That was an issue about a decade ago, then we stopped hearing about it. The shippers would provide minimal living conditions and sometimes lose contact at the other end. Most of these immigrants were southern Chinese who'd become effectively indentured servants for several years in the US while paying off their fees. I wonder if it has stopped. Maybe slightly higher 9-11 security would have detected a greater fraction of these. I'd guess just coming through the northern or southern US borders is a lot less trouble.

They're conglomerates, right?

[Caratted]

What grinds my gears is not the fact that the commenters have come up with a marketable, fiscally sufficient means of alleviating the problem in regards to both merchant losses and pollution within a few minutes of this article going live... No, that's what I come here for, anyway.

My problem is that the folks in the executive offices of the shipping companies are in an office suite that probably has a big something-"insurance" sign on the front of it, and they don't give a rat's ass about your silly pollution or physical losses so long as they can push the costs of such inconveniences away from them and to the folks leasing their containers and buying their insurance.

Re:They're conglomerates, right?

[HornWumpus]

Really, you come here to hear uninformed idiots come up with middle-school 'easy' solutions to real and difficult problems.

Read a little closer, there have been no 'marketable, fiscally sufficient means of alleviating the problem in regards to both merchant losses and pollution' posted on this thread. Only 'have another ship pick them out of the water' type stupidity.

Re:They're conglomerates, right?

[Caratted]

I was really referencing the cheap GPS utility, activated on a 180 degree rotation, that can send out a public beacon if the shippers/merchants don't feel like retrieving it themselves within a given timeframe.

Sounds pretty damn good to me. Easily affordable: As mentioned, one of those containers themselves is $2-3k, they hold hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars of cargo, and now you've given opportunity to opportunists, if you don't feel like retrieving it yourself.

Re:They're conglomerates, right?

[HornWumpus]

Did you bother reading any of the engineering analysis of pulling a shipping container almost full of water out of the ocean? Thought about the costs of running such a ship?

I didn't think so.

The only economical use for the above mentioned data would be to blow up the container to mitigate the navigation hazard.

Even that is not economical if you don't hold the shippers responsible for the hazards they create.

Re:They're conglomerates, right?

[Caratted]

No, I don't need an engineering analysis to know that you can cut through metal, underwater. So, negate retrieving the containers, even if you only get to 10% of the lost containers in a year, there are millions of dollars in supplies to be pulled back up and sold on an open market.

We can go off on tangents about what is economically feasible, and it will add up to jack-all when we're all out of oil to push this worthless shit around.

It's all about self-sufficiency. And, any way, my real point was that conglomerates blow.

Dupe?

[bogidu]

Isn't this just a reprint of this article http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12718251 from 3 months ago?

Re:Dupe?

[Finallyjoined!!!]

No.

Mob code word?

[DreamArcher]

Isn't "fell off the back of a truck" code for stolen? I'm sure it's the same for shipping.

Hey, just out of curiosity --

[MJMullinII]

Just what would be the International law regarding...oh, I don't know...salvage of these things :)

Target practice for air force/naval planes?

[Fatal]

A friend of mine once told us a story about how the (Australian) air force uses lost floating shipping containers for target practice. That is, when they encounter these floating shipping containers, they fire on them to blow them up / clear the floating hazard.

Is there any truth to this or is it just an old wives tale?

Ima make you dig for it in fishy water

[mrmeval]

Have you been on the sea at sea state 5?!? It will fucking launch the damn things even if everything is perfectly done by the boat crew with perfect chains, tie downs, clamps, etc the container may have a defect or if it's perfect having multiple Gs on a container weight 50k makes things give up.

There's a whole world of marine disasters
http://www.ntsb.gov/publictn/m_acc.htm

Ima make you dig for 'em, there's more by any country with commercial shipping.

They seem to play bash'em ship a lot.

Nobody listens to you "Mr. Trolling Trash Online"

[Anonymous Coward]

We all know you're just a piece of online trolling trash per your own admissions thereof here http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1907528&cid=34543612 which is why most of your replies get little to no response - we know what you're about, being trolling online scum. Fact.

Stupid comment as usual from you, troll

[Anonymous Coward]

We all know you're just a piece of online trolling trash per your own admissions thereof here http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1907528&cid=34543612 because, after all, you even admit to it you trolling online trash scumbag. Fact.

The sea levels are rising!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

By dumping containers in the ocean the sea levels will finally meet the projecting increases predicted by global warming.

Yellow Pages for Higher studies

[sneha6661]

World Yellow Pages for Higher studies.Find University, Institute, Colleges World wide & talk business.Free Listing www.kezkostudy.com

Re:Nobody listens to you "Mr. Trolling Trash Onlin

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck of APK, the only person who cares about your malice is yourself.

Have a good shit, wank yourself and go to sleep.

I guarantee

[Anonymous Coward]

I guarantee you the scientists will find "significant environmental damage", prevent questionable (but peer reviewed, so not questioned) data, and will make an appeal for further funding. They will also get published in Nature.

Sea Levels Rising?

[tmjva]

So it is not global warming (or climate change) causing the sea level to rise! It is the continuous deposit of shipping containers displacing the water!

(And it isn't helped by the North American continent sinking because of the storage of National Geographics in subscriber's basements.)

reality check

[whitroth]

I just finished a reading a story that involved container ships, where the author made a point that they *deliberately* put the empties on top, knowing that some will get knocked off.

Further, of course they're fastened. However, when a wave comes *over* the ship, or the wind hits gale force, on a nice, compleely non-aerodynamic surface, that's a *hell* of a lot of force. One goes, and it takes more with it.

And then there are the greedy idiot shipping lines who pile them up to insane hights (or haven't y'all seen the picks of the ships that fell over sideways?)
                      mark

Not good news for me

[nobodie]

I'm about to send a 28 cu m. container to the US with all my earthly possessions, this story does not make me happy. Who allowed this spiteful and destructive article in here anyway?

Re:studying th e impact in my pants

[RyuhoKudo]

(Score:-1, Funny)
You are -1 Funny, that made me laugh for some reason.