Shipping containers are stacked at a port in Bayonne, NJ, on October 15. Supply chain problems are disrupting the global economy, causing delays and container shortages.
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Spencer Platt / Getty Images
Shipping containers are stacked at a port in Bayonne, NJ, on October 15. Supply chain problems are disrupting the global economy, causing delays and container shortages.
Spencer Platt / Getty Images
Ah, the normal shipping box. It’s really no different than a big steel box with a few doors. At any given time, millions of the containers piled up on ships plying the world’s waterways. Affected by weather and waves, they’re packed with just about anything you can imagine – exotic fruits and vegetables, inexpensive clothing and electronics, parts for cars and trucks. .
Marc Levinson, an economist, historian and author of two books on shipping containers.
These days during the coronavirus pandemic, with Holidays are fast approaching, piled container ships were stuck in traffic at ports, that is strangle the economy. Delayed containers have become both a symptom and a contributing cause of problems in the global supply chain. But in retrospect, goods have generally moved easier and cheaper than before these big crates arrived, making them almost indispensable to the global economy.
Bottlenecks have formed during the coronavirus pandemic at US ports, causing shipping delays. Here, the container ships CMA CGM Theodore Roosevelt (far left) and CMA CGM Panama (centre) are moored at the Port of Los Angeles.
Damian Dovarganes / AP
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Damian Dovarganes / AP
Bottlenecks have formed during the coronavirus pandemic at US ports, causing shipping delays. Here, the container ships CMA CGM Theodore Roosevelt (far left) and CMA CGM Panama (centre) are moored at the Port of Los Angeles.
Damian Dovarganes / AP
Goods were lined up one by one
Before containers, shipping was extremely expensive because each piece of cargo had to be loaded onto separate ships.
“On a typical ship in the 1950s, you might have 200,000 different items … and then each has to be taken off the ship separately when the ship docks,” says Levinson. “So loading and unloading a ship takes a long time. There’s a lot of damaged cargo. There’s a lot of lost or stolen cargo.”
In 1956, an American businessman named Malcom McLean used the first modern container ship. He owns a trucking company and is looking for ways to avoid congestion on the highway. McLean show the idea of unloading the containers from his truck and taking them on board.
“His first ship was called the Ideal X. It was an oil tanker built during the Second World War,” says Levinson. “The deck is essentially a frame on which containers can be protected.” That tanker only carried 58 containers.
The containers went abroad a decade later
The first international container ship voyage was in 1966 between Newark, NJ and Rotterdam in the Netherlands. That has dramatically changed shipping. New trade routes were formed, special cranes were invented for loading and unloading containers, and increasingly larger ships were built.
Janet Porter, chair of the editorial board of Lloyd’s List, a London-based maritime information service, recalls 1996 seeing the largest container ship in the world at the time – it could carry 6,000 containers.
“And it’s considered absolutely gigantic. The barriers have been broken,” Porter said. “And now… they’re just toddlers,” she said, using English expression for miniature. “I mean, the biggest ships are about 24,000.”
Now the boxes have more uses
Containers are now used for more than just shipping. In many parts of the world, they have been converted into makeshift schools, restaurants, clinics and prisons. Architects in rich countries are turning them into high-end modular homes.
California-based company Crate Modular, for example, using containers to make affordable multi-family apartments, temporary housing for the homeless, and school buildings.
“We buy these empty one-way shipping containers, and then we bring them to our plant in Carson, California,” said Amanda Gattenby, the company’s vice president of development. “We converted them from shipping containers into houses by cutting the edges off, gluing them together to make more space, adding steel, installing plumbing, electrical and drywall. “
The finished apartments are fully insulated and feature tiled bathrooms, air conditioning and high ceilings, says Gattenby.
“Over the past two years, we have produced 432 homeless beds and 81 affordable homes, as well as a number of commercial and educational projects, converting more than 350 shipping containers into buildings,” she said. approved by the state.
Supply and demand increase costs
According to Porter of Lloyd’s List, now during the pandemic, people are buying so many goods that they are boosting demand and leading to container shortages, causing their prices to skyrocket, according to Porter of Lloyd’s List.
She says they went from $1,500 for a 20-foot container and $2,800 for a 40-foot van at the end of 2019 to $3,000 / $5,800 in 2020. Now they’re about $4,000 / 6,400 dollars, but she has seen spot deliveries of up to $6,000 / $8,000.
She hopes that prices will fall once the supply chain crisis is over.
“The reason there is a shortage is because so many of them are stuck on ships waiting outside the port because of this supply chain crisis,” Porter said. And that’s not only causing delays for businesses as they wait for goods and parts to arrive, but she adds that “those containers cannot be shipped back to where they should be.”
Shipping containers cannot be unloaded at the docks fast enough to be sent back to Asia, where they will be used again to help meet consumer demand.
China, the world’s largest producer of shipping containers, is trying to fill a shortage – companies there produced 300,000 containers in September alone. Reuters reported.
But no matter how much, the supply chain crisis will not be resolved until containers are unloaded and turned around more quickly.
