In the past, transportation of goods remained the same inefficient, ineffective, and costly process that it had been for centuries upon centuries. However, within the past century, the entire process has been revolutionised by the humble shipping container, and today, we'd like to look at how exactly that shipping container has dramatically altered the process of shipping from top to bottom.

Where We Started
In the past, shipping goods across the world required some combination of solid and liquid containers, including crates, kegs, drums, barrels, and sacks. However, the non-standard form of these containers, as well as their small, unwieldly shapes made them hard to effectively and efficiently load them onto ships at port, making the process much longer than it needed to be. As a consequence of how long the process of loading ships could be and the unsealed nature of these containers, theft was rampant, with thieves able to slip in, sneak a hand into a container, remove a small portion of the load, and then slip away before they could be caught. As globalism continued to ramp up in the twentieth century, however, that clearly wasn't going to be acceptable for much longer, and a new solution was necessary.

The World Wars
During World War I, the US struggled to supply their troops effectively, even during their limited time in the war. When World War II rolled around, the country as a whole was ready for a revolution in shipping that would allow them to keep their troops effectively supplied, aiding the vital war effort. The revolution ended up being two-fold, with two different sources of inspiration overlapping to create the final product. The first was the government's introduction of standardised boxes of war materials, which dramatically increased the American's ability to ship supplies across the world. Shortly after the war, a trucker by the name of Malcom McLean took note of that innovation and decided to apply that to an entire truck trailer, starting a shipping company that shipped truck trailers around the world and loaded them onto empty trucks at their destination, allowing them to be easily loaded and unloaded at port. Not long after, containers became standard.

Where We Ended Up
Today, containers are a standard for the world's shipping industry for a variety of reasons. Not only are these containers efficiently stacked and transported, increasing their total throughput while decreasing their handling time, they are also typically entirely sealed, making it much, much harder for opportunistic thieves to steal the contents of these containers. As a result, their inclusion in the shipping industry has boomed, and the increased capacity of these containers has helped decrease shipping cost over the past few decades. If you're looking to benefit from the decreased cost of transport that shipping containers can provide, you won't have to look any further than our team here at WSI. To speak with us about our container transport services in Sydney, give our team a call on +61 2 8319 2855.