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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."
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."
If you buy local, you need less transport
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger
by Marc Levinson
A really good read
Dave Barnes 9 breweries within walking distance of my house
They meant the cost to transport the shirt was one cent. Not the unit cost of the shirt, of course.
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"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.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
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.