The Box That Built the Modern World

HughPickens.com writes: Andrew Curry has an interesting article about how more than any other single innovation, the shipping container epitomizes the enormity, sophistication, and importance of our modern transportation system. It's invisible to most people, but fundamental to how practically everything in our consumer-driven lives works. "Think of the shipping container as the Internet of thing," says Curry. "Just as your email is disassembled into discrete bundles of data the minute you hit send, then re-assembled in your recipient's inbox later, the uniform, ubiquitous boxes are designed to be interchangeable, their contents irrelevant." Last year the world's container ports moved 560 million 20-foot containers. Even cars and trucks—known in the trade as "RoRo," or "roll-on, roll-off" cargo—are increasingly being loaded into containers rather than specialized ships. "Containers are just a lot easier," says James Rice. "A box is a box. All you need is a vessel, a berth, and a place to put the container on the ground.

Consider the economics of a T-shirt sewn at a factory near Beijing. The total time in transit for a typical box from a Chinese factory to a customer in Europe might be as little as 35 days. Cost per shirt? "Less than one U.S. cent," says Rainer Horn. "It doesn't matter anymore where you produce something now, because transport costs aren't important."

Comments

There's still the pollution thing

[fustakrakich]

If you buy local, you need less transport

Re:There's still the pollution thing

[DamonHD]

But quite possibly no less cost, time, energy or carbon.

It can take more energy/cost/etc to ship something inefficiently within your local state/county/etc than to get it shipped efficiently from China.

Rgds

Damon

Re:There's still the pollution thing

[khallow]

Introducing economic inefficiencies also creates pollution. And if all you do is buy local, then how are you ever going to taste the variety of foods world-wide?

Re:There's still the pollution thing

[ShanghaiBill]

If you buy local, you need less transport

Transport costs are very low, and energy used in transport is likely a lot lower than you think (which is why the cost is low). If you live in California, you may think you are being "green" by eating local California grapes instead of grapes from Chile. But you are wrong. The California grapes are grown with energy intensive irrigation. The water is pumped for hundreds of miles. The Chilean grapes are grown with rainwater. That makes a much bigger difference than the transport of the final product.

As a general rule of thumb, the product produced with the least resources, is the one with the lowest price.

Re:There's still the pollution thing

[Solandri]

Not necessarily. You have to take into account the efficiency of the transport. From the figures I've seen, the fuel cost to ship something from China to the U.S. is about the same as the fuel cost to transport it from a U.S. port to its final destination inland (the U.S. has a terrible rail system so most goods are transported by relatively inefficient trucks).

Assuming the 1 cent to transport a T-shirt from China figure is correct, if you're driving more than 500 feet to buy your "local" T-shirt, you're producing more pollution buying from that local store. It's even questionable if walking that distance has a smaller pollution footprint because of the energy cost needed to produce the food you ate which powers your walk to the local store. (And no, you cannot bypass this by growing a home garden. People vastly underestimate how much land is needed to grow the food we eat. Now factor in the energy needed to work all that land, and you'll quickly find that you'll need to increase your daily caloric intake to 5000-8000 kcal/day if you farm that by hand. There's a very good reason we shifted that inefficient labor-intensive task to being done by machines.)

Maximum energy efficiency is achieved when you multitask and group multiple tasks together. That's how buying stuff on Amazon can end up cheaper with a smaller energy footprint than buying stuff locally. Yes if Amazon were to ship just one T-shirt to you and UPS sent a truck out to deliver just one T-shirt to your house, it' be horribly inefficient. But that UPS truck makes a hundred or so deliveries on its daily route so the portion of its total drive attributable to your T-shirt package delivery is only a few hundred or few thousand feet. Likewise Amazon processes millions of orders every day, so the portion of its operating costs attributable to your single order is very small. This is also the same reason the big department stores end up being able to offer lower prices than the small mom and pop shop - greater volume of sales generates more opportunity for efficiency improvements. If you can come up with a way to combine big box efficiency with the mom and pop buying experience, you'll become the next billionaire.

Re:There's still the pollution thing

[Anonymous Coward]

What the fuck is "efficiently" shipped from China.

You do understand how cargo ships work? And the literal crap they burn for fuel.

More containers than you can count, all bound for the same destination, all travelling in a single ship. Granted, that ships burns a lot of fuel, but that's still more efficient than most other ways of shipping that number of containers. Short of bringing back sails (which has been floated a few times) container ships are among the most efficient means of freight transport across long distances.

As for the "literal" crap they burn for fuel, first read a dictionary, and second that crap would otherwise go to waste. It's cheap to produce and relatively cleanly used.

Re:There's still the pollution thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yes, I'm typing at my Canadian keyboard on my American computer sitting on my locally produced chair.... Wait, let me check. IKEA desk, made in China, keyboard, computer, chair, all China, as a matter of fact, the only things I have that are built in North America is my collection of vintage test gear.

And this technology that keeps getting better, when will I see a reduced workweek because of it?

Re:There's still the pollution thing

[serviscope_minor]

Define: less.

You certainly need to travel less distance. However, modern container ships are fearsomely efficient. They've been banging on about "green" and "low carbon" recently, but they've always been practicing that since it reduces costs and increases the very slim profit margins.

In terms of shipping, it'll take easily as much, probably substantially more carbon getting the goods from the dock to your door as it does getting them from China to your nearest major container port. The engines on those ships hit over 50% thermal efficiency for the best of them, which is second only giant land based combined cycle plants (it's better than coal plants). That combined with immense volume (drag is related to area, so size pays off well) and slow speed means that container ships are quite astonishingly efficient.

I crunched the numbers once for curiosity and was amazed by the results.

Buying local can save a bit, but not nearly as much as you think. Nonetheless, there's still other good reasons for buying local, and I try to do it where possible.

Re:There's still the pollution thing

[CharlieG]

Correct. People don't realize how fuel EFFICIENT shipping really is. At "Slow" speeds (18 knots) where more than 1/2 the worlds cargo ships run, and figuring a 9000-10000 TEU ship (aka holds 9000-10000 20 ft containers, 1/2 that if all 40Ft boxes) - the ship will typically burn 100 Tons of fuel/day - or 1/100th of a ton of fuel per container/day, and roughly (because bunker C - the 'crap they burn' - Now there are roughly depending on exact fuel 250-280 gallons/ton of fuel - so it takes about 1/4 gallon of fuel per DAY to move each one of those containers. But the joke? Go to the online shipping calculators - China to west coast USA (where it will get put on a train) - 15 days, NOT 15. So you are talking roughly 3.75 gallons of fuel to move that container of tee-shirts from China to the US - that's the container, all the goods etc.
Work the math. You probably burn more fuel per shirt driving to the store, picking up the shirt, and driving home than shipping it from China takes. Remember - ships float, and take surprisingly little fuel per ton to move freight. It is why canals were such a big deal back when - a full barge of coal or gravel or whatever could be moved by ONE horse.

Re:There's still the pollution thing

[kencurry]

This is a big factor: the cheapness and distance shipped have us moving to a disposable model vs. repair. I just went through this with a washing machine and a lawn mower. The washing machine was LG; very hard to find a schematic with labeled parts. I had to guess and was wrong twice. I didn't bother to ship back the wrong parts as they were about 10 bucks, shipping was also about 10 bucks. So I threw the bad ones away.

Same issue with the lawnmower. Was a Yard Machines mower with Briggs & Stratton engine. tried the 800 number (was still under warrantee) which was a total joke. Web site was confusing and useless. Did not recognize my engine serial number to send me into someplace that I could get engine info/troubleshooting/parts list.

Ended up taking it to a local place where the Mexicanos who ran it figured out the problem and fixed the mower (In your face Donald Trump!)

So, while in theory the cost of these appliances and the world efficiency is improved with the model of cheap parts&labor from China. The reality is a lot of wasted time, shipping wrong replacement parts, and giving up and tossing out the old piece-o-crap to a landfill and buying something new.

I am not buying into the purported efficiencies posted here.

Re:There's still the pollution thing

[KGIII]

It's okay - we were told, just a few days ago, that the most important innovation was the refrigerator. Now it's a shipping container. Maybe next week it will be the transistor. At this point, I guess all we're supposed to do is howl and screech like monkeys and occasionally throw poop at one another in a maelstrom of conflicting information.

Re:There's still the pollution thing

[CharlieG]

BTW, when you work it out to 34000 teeshirts/container, that total use of fuel is .00011 gallons of fuel to move that shirt from China to the US - so say I'm off on my numbers by a factor of 10, so it took 1/1000 of a gallon of fuel to move that shirt trans pacific. Now if we figure 10 Kilos of CO2/Gallon (Per the US EIA), we are talking .01 Kilos of CO2. Assume you live a 20 minute round trip to the store, and weigh 160 lbs (adult male) - aka 10 minutes walk to the store, 10 mins back - the formula I saw said .00002lbs of CO2 emitted per minute walking per lb of person, so you emit .029 kilos of CO2 walking to and from the store, YES, nearly THREE times the CO2 as transporting the shirt from China. Interesting to put in in perspective, isn't it? And THAT is saying my numbers are off by 10x - my actual number shows you are emitting 30x the CO2 walking to the store and back

Re:There's still the pollution thing

[lgw]

Shipping by sea via large container ships is astonishingly efficient, which is the whole point here. (Plus, pollution at sea isn't a concern - it's already quite diluted, and there just aren't that many ships.) It seems reasonable that, per-pound, the ocean voyage take less energy than 100 miles on the road in a truck.

Re:There's still the pollution thing

[Wrath0fb0b]

So, while in theory the cost of these appliances and the world efficiency is improved with the model of cheap parts&labor from China. The reality is a lot of wasted time, shipping wrong replacement parts, and giving up and tossing out the old piece-o-crap to a landfill and buying something new.

That conclusion is dependant on the value of your time (or a hired appliance repair dude @ $70/hr) looking up and understanding the schematic, deducing the cause of the failure, figuring out which part or parts need to be replaced and then doing the repair, adjusted for the probability of making a mistake anywhere in the process. Compare that with the number of engineer-hours required to design the thing, maintain the production lines and run the distribution apparatus (all of it) divided into the number of units produced. You might find that you just spent more time repairing your unit than was (amortized) spent on the entire rest of its lifetime ...

I guess another way of saying this is that every good has an optimal level of reliability -- beyond which it costs less to regularly replace the failing units than to improve the process or to provide for repairs. We could probably build a washer (or a car, or a hard drive) that lasts longer than the ones we have today, but what would the point be if the TCO was actually higher? Unless you were running the Presidential Motorcade or going all Mad Max, would you buy a car that failed half as often if the TCO was $300/mo instead of $200/mo (and that's including cost of repairs plus your time and inconvenience to bring it to the shop already priced in)? Would Amazon buy more reliable hard drives for AWS (if they were on the market) or would they just buy the cheap ones and build in redundancy? Does my small business website need 99.99% uptime or is 99.9% sufficient? Will the business I lose in the 40 minutes per month difference make up the cost? We can always throw more money at any good/process to make it more reliable -- but there has to be some stopping point where we decide that the marginal gains no longer make sense.

Another aspect to keep in mind is that doing things more reliably at global-scale means paying attention to all those nines. Just like getting from 99.9% uptime to 99.99% is going to cost more than each previous SLA, so to is the calculation for every input to the washer, plus the process/machinery that assembles it, plus the process/machinery that tests it. The acceptable marginal failure rate is going to scale against the marginal cost for increasing reliability.

[ And interestingly enough, Speed Queen does specialize in super-simple super-reliable washers and dryers, largely for the commercial (coin-op) market where downtime is more expensive. If it means a lot to you for your washer, by all means pay more for one and rest easier. Last I checked, they were more than 3x the upfront cost though, meaning that even if your other washer breaks twice out of warranty and is totally unrepairable and you have to buy a new one, you're still ahead! ]

Re:There's still the pollution thing

[Snotnose]

I vote for the toilet. I can't see heading outside in the cold to sit on a cold toilet seat. It would definitely cut into the reading I get done.

Re:There's still the pollution thing

[MountainLogic]

CharlieG, Really good information about water based transport, but regrettably far too few containers get put onto rail cars. Your comments about the bunker C is frightening for particulate and chemical pollution. However, our ports are becoming a real crunch point. Container ships drop a huge bolus of containers into the heart of our metro areas with insufficient or non-existant rail capacity to handle the load resulting in trucks jamming our roads. Our ports desperately need to build out their rail connects as well as upgrading to handle the ever larger ships. Also our trunk rail line capacity is being bought up in big single buys for bulk cargo (i.e., coal & oil) so even getting space on rail for containers is hard. We desperately need our Port Authorities to invest in rail connections and even long haul rail lines to keep our freeway open. Cough, cough, Ports of Seattle and Tacoma it is time to restore the Old Milwaukie line over Snoqualmie Pass to Spokane to reduce traffic overhead, speed deliveries and assure schedule reliability (how often are deliveries delayed by road/traffic closures?) for cargo. The restored rail line would do more to fix Seattle traffic than all the transit and new freeways being proposed by taking these truck off the roads.
CharlieG, have to disagree with 3.75 gallon round trip to the mall for most americans even with a monster SUV. Add in schlepping the t-shirt around from warehouse to warehouse and then to store and you may be right on total land fule usage. Another side note, products with a tight market window such as smart phones fly and that is a wholly different animal in terms of fuel usage.

Re:There's still the pollution thing

[MountainLogic]

Indeed, we did have a great rail system, but it has been perverted by energy companies exporting coal and oil. The coal and oil companies have cut monopolistic deals to buy up all the capacity on many lines. They are able to do this by making big buys. This has forced others who ship periodically to rely on much more expensive trucks. In some cases farmers who have used these lines for over 100 years have not been able to get product to market because trucking cost more than their profit. Also our rail lines are perpetually in decay and we are loosing many miles of feeder lines that service warehouse and factories districts every year causing a reverse Metcalf effect that will eventually kill the utility of our critical rail system.

Re:There's still the pollution thing

[Insipid Trunculance]

Harappa?

Re:There's still the pollution thing

[HairyNevus]

If we're just talking shipping from a Chinese port to a U.S. port, sure. That will take less energy per pound than 100 miles in a truck. What I (mis?)understood was the claim that shipping a product from just within a state or county would still be less efficient than ordering the product all the way from China. That's clearly not the case as when the product arrives in the U.S. it would have to undergo those inefficient miles in a truck (unless you lived in a port city), possibly across multiple state lines. So, I don't see why DamonHD's comment is deemed so Insightful when replying to fustakrakich's point that local is less miles.

Re:There's still the pollution thing

[KGIII]

You know what's really cool about Slashdot? I can just barely give a hint of something I've forgotten and someone almost always chimes in with the right answer. I watch documentaries as entertainment - not education, so I don't retain them for long. Someone here, almost always, knows exactly what I mean - thanks and that's the place. Looking at the pictures makes me wonder if they had indoor plumbing or if they just had the channels in the street. I've not spent time looking deeper - just a quick right click and Google.

I understand they've found at least a couple of them - Indus Valley archaeological sites that is - at least. I've seen a couple of different places in the documentaries. It's kind of fascinating how old their culture is and how, presumably, advanced they were for the time. Some of those ancient places are really interesting. I've thought about volunteering (you can do that) and going on a dig, say, in Turkey but I've never done it. I do have a lady friend who's in the Maine department and now works with the museum but I've only visited a dig she was doing with some UMF students out in Chesterville on the esker. I was a bit too drunk to be helping. It was fun to watch though.

I kind of wish I retained more of what I watch but I think it might lose the magic if I try. So, they're passive and I'm just never able to remember names, dates, and that sort of thing but I actually recall quite a bunch of useless stuff but I've really been slacking on the particulars and I guess I'm okay with that. I can't fit all that into my brain without some important stuff leaking out.

Re:There's still the pollution thing

[InterGuru]

You could always, as a friend of mine did, hang the toilet seat by the wood stove inside the house, and carry it out when you wanted to use it.

Re: There's still the pollution thing

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

You are, empirically, wrong. Global trade has helped people in the West (on average - some people have been hurt, but more have gained) and it's helped a lot of less-developed countries raise their standard of living. Westerners don't gain as much from global trade, but on the whole it does raise quality of life.

As for saying efficiency makes quality of life worse - I cannot understand that opinion. Doing more with less is fantastic, and it's arguably one thing that makes us human.

Re:There's still the pollution thing

[bkmoore]

It's okay - we were told, just a few days ago, that the most important innovation was the refrigerator...

I vote for fire and then the wheel. Maybe someday we'll be saying, "You didn't have to reinvent the shipping container."

Re:There's still the pollution thing

[thegarbz]

The old world is still available but unfortunately most people are not interested in participating. A nice Miele washing machine can be repaired by any mechanic. My Fema coffee grinder looks like it is about 100 years old and yet I can still buy each part individually, and a modern Honda lawn mower has every bit the service and warranty you expect from a quality Japanese product (not that you need to rely on that with such a nicely made engine). If you pay real money for quality gear then repairs are still possible. My neighbour has no problem finding replacement bits for his chainsaw after 20 years, but I couldn't find the shitty replacement tensioner for my cheap electric no-name brand only 3 years after I bought it.

There are of course exceptions to the rule. Even expensive TVs have no user serviceable parts, and if you buy a cheap Dell you're more likely to be able to replace a component then an expensive Surface.

Re:There's still the pollution thing

[0123456]

It's okay - we were told, just a few days ago, that the most important innovation was the refrigerator. Now it's a shipping container.

Obviously it's a shipping container full of refrigerators.

Re: There's still the pollution thing

[ShanghaiBill]

Human quality of life would be better without so much efficiency and global trade, which doesn't raise quality of life

Nonsense. China opened to world trade in 1980. Since then, income has increased eight-fold, and hundreds of millions have been lifted out of poverty. The poorest countries in the world today are sub-Saharan African countries with near zero trade. The world's richest countries are those with the most open economies.

Re:There's still the pollution thing

[TapeCutter]

PS: On a more positive note for the environment, it is now cheaper for India to build solar/wind farms than it is to build coal fired plants fed by imported Aussie coal. That's a GoodThing(TM) for everyone except Aussie miners and their dependent industries. India expects to connect 400 million people to electricity, sewerage, and water in the next decade, that's roughly the same number of people as the US/UK/AU/NZ combined. They are very serious about that goal since the current (popular) government was elected on a promise of "clean electricity" and "an indoor toilet in every home". Solar and wind are popular ideas with rural Indians who in general despise mining companies, IMO for good reasons in many cases.

Re:There's still the pollution thing

[bbelt16ag]

The Refrigerator has done more for this world in keep food from spoiling and saving people from death and illness than all the shipping containers in the world.

Re:There's still the pollution thing

[JoeMerchant]

when will I see a reduced workweek because of it?

When you move to Germany or France.

Re:There's still the pollution thing

[Wrath0fb0b]

When you say the repair was "under $60", you missed the $70/hour thing going rate for appliance repair labor.

And if you are smart enough to understand and repair a washer "easily" then there are tons of more valuable things we could be paying you to do.

Re: There's still the pollution thing

[gzuckier]

Human quality of life would be better without so much efficiency and global trade, which doesn't raise quality of life

Nonsense. China opened to world trade in 1980. Since then, income has increased eight-fold, and hundreds of millions have been lifted out of poverty. The poorest countries in the world today are sub-Saharan African countries with near zero trade. The world's richest countries are those with the most open economies.

And that's been AWESOME for their cities' air quality, hasn't it? Rich (skyscrapers & lots of busy people) does not equal quality of life.

rich guy, speaking from one of his country houses: "Don't be silly you socialist. air pollution and living in a human anthill are the price we pay for this terrific life we lead"

A great book

[davebarnes]

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

A really good read

Re:A great book

[CanadianMacFan]

I read it earlier this year and it's a lot better than what you would expect considering the subject. As you go through it you can see how seemingly small decisions made half a century ago are still influencing how we design our infrastructure today (trucks vs. trains).

Re:BS

[kamapuaa]

They meant the cost to transport the shirt was one cent. Not the unit cost of the shirt, of course.

Not just goods

[Crowd Computing]

It can also be used to transport people, often with fatal results. Or you can go eco and turn it into a modular pre-fab house.

Pointless analogy

[TWX]

"Think of the shipping container as the Internet of thing," says Curry. "Just as your email is disassembled into discrete bundles of data the minute you hit send, then re-assembled in your recipient's inbox later, the uniform, ubiquitous boxes are designed to be interchangeable, their contents irrelevant."

This analogy is poorly constructed. Analogies are needed when an abstract concept with no tangible component needs to be explained by substituting a tangible form in place of an abstract form. Packing shipping containers, even with disparate contents that are later 'broken down' to go to individual recipients, is a tangible concept that does not need to use an abstract concept like data into packets into frames into bits back into frames back into bits back into frames back into packets (etc) to explain.

It doesn't even need something abstract to explain how the form factors of shipping containers impact goods, as one can simply state that due to standardization in three or four common shipping container sizes dictates the size and packing of goods that get packed into such containers, which in-turn dictate the dimensions of pallets on which goods may be placed, the size of railcars on which containers may ride, and even the size of tunnels for rail cars and the shapes of loading docks at distribution facilities.

One can even talk about the downsides (like how the form factors were somewhat arbitrary and work equally well and poorly for both fractional and SI units) and how there's real concern for the wastes associated with moving the mass the mass of the container itself. Again, no analogy needed.

Re:Pointless analogy

[ottawanker]

Speaking of which, I thought it was the pallet that changed everything..

Pallets: The Single Most Important Object in the Global Economy

Re:Pointless analogy

[drinkypoo]

Containers are like packets in many ways, in theory they can be any size but if you want to get them through a gateway in practice they need to be a specific size. They have labels on them describing their contents which are often lies. They sometimes fall off the boat and get lost...

Re:Pointless analogy

[TWX]

I don't know how one could judge the human-scale pallet against the machine-scale shipping container. Both revolutionized their particular aspect of shipping and storage, and they're definitely intermingled. I've watched an idiot that was too stupid to go to the warehousing and materiel department to get spare pallets and stretchwrap force a crew of eight to manually pack hundreds of old computer cases into a shipping container for storage, only to have to unload the cases when the container had to be moved, and then repack them again manually. Had he had half a brain he would have gotten about 20 pallets, had the computer cases stacked and wrapped (and inventoried on each pallet with packing slip under the outermost layer of stretchwrap, but that's another story) and and then one or two guys in the course of an afternoon could have packed and unpacked that container with nothing more than an unpowered pallet jack.

It's true that there might have been some loss of useful volume in using pallets, as there needs to be enough space around the wrapped contents to let them pass each other inside, but the ultimate fate of these computer cases was to be scrapped. It would have been easier at all levels had he simply used pallets, as even the container probably could have been moved while full as the wrapped pallets wouldn't have shifted as much as individually stacked cases would have.

Re:Pointless analogy

[mvdw]

The United States has or had a tax on completed light trucks imported from Japan. The solution for the Isuzu Trooper in the eighties and early nineties was to basically leave the rear seat out such that "final assembly" was completed at the dealership. I don't know how extensive the final assembly step was over standard new-car prep (where they're supposed to basically verify that the factory torqued key fasteners down etc) but I imagine that they shipped the rear seat assembly and other parts necessary for final assembly inside of the vehicle itself, since it has a fairly voluminous interior when that rear seat isn't bolted-down and configured for passenger use.

Almost right; From wikipedia: "From 1978–1987 the Subaru BRAT carried two rear-facing seats (with seatbelts and carpeting) in its rear bed to meet classification as a "passenger vehicle" and not a light truck." This was in direct respons to a so-called "Chicken tax" from the early '60s. Look up Chicken Tax on wikipedia - it's an interesting read how a tax intended to protect a certain market had ramifications for a completely different industry for many decades to come.

Re:BS

[fnj]

I don't want to call you stupid, but are you drunk or something? The assertion is that it costs one cent to ship a T-shirt across the world. A shirt you pay at least five bucks for in the store. You can bet ylour ass that shirt costs more than one cent to manufacture, even in China. That means that manufacturing it 20,000 km away as compared to 1 km away only has a penalty of 0.2% of the retail price, and still a small fraction of the manufacturing cost. Goddam right the bulk trunk transportation costs are negligible.

It costs you more to ship that T-shirt 1 km locally in small lots than it does to trunk it in bulk all the way across the world.

No wonder I can buy 100 capacitors direct from from China for a buck and have them shipped free all the way to my door. That's about as far from "enormous cost per unit volume" as you can get.

Like much innovation, it was resisted

[John Jorsett]

I'm old enough to remember when containerization was just beginning to ramp up. The stevedores (the guys who manually shifted the goods from ship to shore and vice versa) were really upset because it would reduce the number of jobs (their contracts typically let them set the number of men on each job. Nice deal, that) and make their pilfering from the cargo much tougher. Somebody estimated that 5% or so of consumer goods never made it to the destination. There were violent strikes and sabotage of the port facilities during that time. Goes to show that when you kick over somebody's rice bowl, no matter how much better you might be making things, you're going to get pushback. A lesson that still applies, these days for the Uber economy.

Re:Like much innovation, it was resisted

[AthanasiusKircher]

There were violent strikes and sabotage of the port facilities during that time. Goes to show that when you kick over somebody's rice bowl, no matter how much better you might be making things, you're going to get pushback. A lesson that still applies, these days for the Uber economy.

It's funny, because I think you overlook the odd commonalities between the old-fashioned stevedore model and the Uber model.

Both of them are based on an idea that having a steady job with consistent employees is unnecessary. It's obviously cheaper to hire people on demand.

The traditional model for stevedores were guys who'd show up at the docks every morning and just HOPE they might get enough work that day to get paid and go home and feed their families. That just depended on whether the shipping schedules and amount of goods happened to be enough to support them.

The life of a lot of these guys was terrible -- they worked hard, when they could, but they had no job security at all... since they had no "job," per se. If they had an unlucky accident and hurt their backs or whatever, they could be out on the street begging.

Then, at some point, through strikes workers' rights movements, the stevedores finally achieved REAL jobs.

Ironically, the "Uber economy" you favor is heading toward putting its "contract workers" (people who struggle to cobble together enough part-time work to live) back in the same place that the stevedores were before unions... standing on the docks, hoping that enough ships come in today to feed the family.

(P.S. I'm not arguing in favor of corrupt unions, nor am I celebrating destructive stevedore protests. But I think we need to realize why those stevedores were so upset to lose their jobs... those were hard-won concessions that they fought to get out of an "Uber economy" model, because it made their lives miserable.)

Re:The next step

[KGIII]

I dunno, I've ordered lots of stuff on a slow boat from China and I'm kind of thinking it cost them more to ship it to me than I paid? I mean, a few dollars - total, with free shipping, for a pretty bulky package. When I get stuff shipped to me, I'm all the way over in Maine and that stuff is coming in on the West Coast. I really don't know how much they pay for shipping but it'd have to be dirt cheap. It usually takes about six weeks to get to me, sometimes longer, but it's almost always free shipping and dirt cheap prices. I'm pretty sure they're losing money or something - if not they're not making a whole lot of money.

Empty Containers

[Anonymous Coward]

On big problem with Shipping Containers is their sometimes one-way nature. My father was in Marine Insurance, and his biggest last big problem was how to get, say 100,000 empty Containers from say, Abu Dhabi, back to all the Ports where they are needed. (That's ~$300,000,000 worth of Containers, every few months...)
Frankly, there's not much of interest in Abu Dhabi that's worth shipping out by Container.
Currently, at US West Coast Ports, between a quarter and a third of incoming full Containers leave Port empty. Just dead space; it's costing companies like Maersk a Billion a year moving boxes of air around.
Only two practical solutions had emerged- Collapsible Containers, where four Containers returned take the place of one, and Single-Use Containers, where they are broken up on the spot into scrap and shipped back to China to be recycled. (Other solutions, like turning them into Housing, are Silly. They still need to be shipped where needed, and making one livable costs ten times the Container value. There are usually cheaper local alternatives.)
This was a few years back; maybe better solutions have emerged since.

Re:The next step

[sjames]

I suspect they probably aren't losing money, that would be kind of silly, though they may not be making much.

Now, just imagine how cheaply the major dealers in the U.S. are getting them when they buy thousands at a time. Then look at what they are selling them for.

Re:The next step

[drinkypoo]

The next logical step should make the outsourcer's blood run cold. That is, individuals gain access to the cheap container shipping.

That's a business in theory, but the problem is, you've got to have some way to get your pallets delivered. You can only get them sent to a freight depot cheaply.

So why can't I sent stuff "sea mail" any more?

[davidwr]

If I want to send a package overseas and I don't care if it takes 2-3 months to get there, I used to be able to save a ton of money by shipping it "sea mail."

Now my only options are air mail. Sure, it will get there in 2-3 weeks or less but I'll be out $20 for something the size and weight of a small paperback. Grrr....

DVI-D and HDMI are the same signals

[tepples]

I was thinking I could maybe put together a frankenbox from other parts I had lying around, well I had a machine from 2006. But that had VGA and DVI outputs, my current monitor only has HDMI and DP.

DVI-D and HDMI are the same signals in a different connector. Monoprice has cheap DVI-D to HDMI cables to let you use the 2006 PC with the current monitor.