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 2006 marks the 50th year of containerization, the brainchild of Malcolm Purcell McLean. Mr. McLean, known as the father of containerization and named Man of the Century by the International Maritime Hall of Fame, truly lived the American Dream. A native of North Carolina and direct descendant of Scottish immigrants, Malcolm claimed that he came up with the idea one day in the 1930s as he was sitting on the dock in New Jersey waiting for bales of cotton to be unloaded from his truck. He figured that if you could modify a standard truck trailer then goods could be loaded much quicker, more efficiently and free from damage than the traditional break bulk method of shipping.
Twenty years later his idea came to fruition. It was April 26, 1956 when the first vessel laden with 58 modified truck containers left Port Newark for Houston, Texas. It was that historic maiden voyage that forged the tremendous success that Malcolm McLean enjoyed over the years to come as founder of Sea-Land Corporation. Today, 18 million containers are said to exist around the globe. Containerized ocean shipments make up about ninety percent of the total, non-bulk ocean cargo around the world. Fifty years later, Mr. McLean's idea still resonates as more than just a revolutionary innovation; it was an idea that permanently changed the way the world does business. McLean's cargo shipped faster and cheaper because loading and unloading times were shortened at each end of the voyage. The sealed cargo reduced the pilfering that went on at various stages of the cargo's journey and also reduced the labor required. The Vietnam War aided his efforts to expand into Asia, and as more ports adapted to the containers, shipping was revolutionized. Nearly every imported consumer good imaginable owes its lower price to the container revolution. McLean sold Sea-Land for $160 million in 1969. He produced more inventions in his lifetime, including a means of lifting patients from a stretcher to a hospital bed. In 1978, restless, McLean returned to shipping, introducing enormous "econoships" to carry cargo at the equator while smaller ships came and went from them, picking up and delivering containers. McLean died in 2001, relatively unknown considering the broad impact of his innovation. |
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