One of my favorite Youtube presenters is The History Guy. Usually three times a week he presents a 15 +/- minute video on some history on some event or item.
The other day he had one on the shipping container.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyNkcsQGaV4
I tried to post it the day it came out, but the Trains site was having "issues."
Jeff
Can still see the CONEX containers in use by the Army on passing military trains. I am sure some of them still date back to Vietnam era. When a unit is stateside they are used to store rapid deployment items to avoid pack and unpack when there is a rapid deployment exercise.
I was happy to see that THG also mentioned the containers trialed in the 1920's-30's. "Greyhounds" mentioned that the failure of the early container trials was subtantially due to the ICC not allowing rate reductions associated with the lower cost of handling containers. As a further aside, John White in his book on freight cars noted that barrels where a small scale containers.
For a longer history, read The Box, by Marc Levinson -- a terrific book, tho more about ships than trains.
TEU=TEBU?
Fuel Foilers (initial stab at fiberglass and aluminum double stack containers)
What became of the containers used on the Super-C? (were they Santa Fe only or were they some universal standardized containers?)
When I was in USAF (68-76) "Conex" was just another everyday term. They were everywhere, used for all sorts of storage.
Such containers were at the heart of the Fort Drum runaway a number of years ago. Container flats were being loaded, and in the process, two of the cars were set in motion - their cut levers having been lifted by persons unknown. Switches set for their departure took them off the military post and down the mainline (they ran through the switch on the mainline) until they encountered some MoW equipment on the tracks...
Even today, I refer to shipping boxes as "Conex's."
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
1) It misstates that the railroads’ early efforts at intermodal using containers “Didn’t Catch On.” This is pure BS. The container system was developing quite well and quite rapidly until the silly stupid government economic regulators put a stop to it by ordering the railroads to increase the container rates to non-competitive levels
That’s right folks, our government ordered corporations to increase their prices. And we’re still paying for that stupidity today. The regulators had power without knowledge, understanding, or consequences of error. A problem that persists to this day.
2) The video gives way too much credit to Malcom McLean. He did have a lot to do with the development of containerization, but he was by no means the first pioneer. That honor might well go to Alfred Holland Smith, president of the New York Central. Mr. Smith promoted and oversaw the implementation of a container system 35 years before McLean’s Ideal-X sailed. McLean might properly be labeled as the first person the government nincompoops allowed to develop a container system, but Smith and the NYC had him beat by decades.
greyhounds I don’t really like the video. It contains serious inaccuracies that promote and/or perpetuate misunderstandings of transportation history. But first, I’ll second the motion in favor of Marc Levinson’s book “The Box.” It’s available from Amazon: The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger - Second Edition with a new chapter by the author: Levinson, Marc: 9780691170817: Amazon.com: Books Levinson is an economist who writes about economic history. He not only recounts historical events, but he understands, and explains, why those events happened. Two of the problems I have with the video are: 1) It misstates that the railroads’ early efforts at intermodal using containers “Didn’t Catch On.” This is pure BS. The container system was developing quite well and quite rapidly until the silly stupid government economic regulators put a stop to it by ordering the railroads to increase the container rates to non-competitive levels That’s right folks, our government ordered corporations to increase their prices. And we’re still paying for that stupidity today. The regulators had power without knowledge, understanding, or consequences of error. A problem that persists to this day. 2) The video gives way too much credit to Malcom McLean. He did have a lot to do with the development of containerization, but he was by no means the first pioneer. That honor might well go to Alfred Holland Smith, president of the New York Central. Mr. Smith promoted and oversaw the implementation of a container system 35 years before McLean’s Ideal-X sailed. McLean might properly be labeled as the first person the government nincompoops allowed to develop a container system, but Smith and the NYC had him beat by decades.
Agreed on the overstating of McLean as a pioneer.. In fact one could say McLean was inspired by two forms of pioneering containerization... SeaTrain which at the time, was utilizing LO-LO (Lift On-Lift Off) of railcars between shore and a vessel. Not being switched onto, and off a ferry. McLean would have seen this operation, since his trucking company, shipped cotton bales to docks at New Jersey port facilities. SeaTrain operated a terminal at Hoboken, NJ.
McLean would also look at the CONEX box, and that's where the idea for Sea-Land was born. The CONEX box was developed during the Korean War. The CONEX itself was a modernized verson of the Transporter Box, developed by the US Army, right after our entry into WWII. McLean just adopted those priciples to a truck sized box, to actually get around ICC weight restrictions. Utilizing coastwise shipping would allow, heavier truck sized weight.
As Greyhounds mentioned, the ICC, severly hurt early intermodal development, by asinine logic from typical bureaucrats.. .
greyhounds But first, I’ll second the motion in favor of Marc Levinson’s book “The Box.”
He did make a point that the rounded tops of the PRR containers woulld have made stacking problematic. I suspect that would have been easily corrected.
It would have been a great benefit to the war effort had the early container system been fully devloped by 1940.
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