The history of the metal box that's wrecking the supply chain

[Jilly_in_VA]

Behold the simple shipping container. It’s a large, steel box that can carry tens of thousands of pounds of cargo. It’s also stackable and designed to fit on ocean freight ships, trains, and even trucks. These containers have been an unnoticed cog in the world’s highly complex manufacturing network for decades. But not anymore.

Thanks to the pandemic, the shipping container is now at the center of the global supply chain crisis, which has interrupted the delivery of everything from medical supplies to holiday gifts. Because of widespread manufacturing delays and bottlenecks, there aren’t enough of these boxes in the right place and at the right time. There are also too many containers at shipping terminals, which is clogging up ports and blocking more cargo from arriving. Exporters, meanwhile, are struggling to find the empty containers they would normally use to send their products to customers abroad. These shipping container problems are continuing to pile up as the larger manufacturing system they helped enable also struggles to adapt.

The disruption has gotten so bad that some US politicians want the government to take on a bigger role in regulating shipping. Last week, a bipartisan group of House members passed legislation that would allow the Federal Maritime Commission, the US’s international ocean transportation agency, to pressure shipping companies to prioritize empty containers for American manufacturers and farmers.

We weren’t always so dependent on these big metal boxes, though. The first commercial container ship voyage set sail in 1956, and it was only in the 1980s that this form of ocean freight really took off. As global trade proliferated, businesses realized that containers could make shipping cheaper and easier to manage at scale. Because these containers were standardized — they’re typically 20 feet or 40 feet long — thousands could be loaded onto a single cargo ship at once.

https://www.vox.com/recode/22832884/shipping-containers-amazon-supply-chain

[marybourg]

1. "unnoticed "? Hardly.

[Hortensis]

13. :) Hardly" for sure, and of course something so incredibly efficient

and necessary is not wrecking the supply chain because they're currently in short supply where needed. They're extremely flexible considering the unimaginably huge amounts of product they do around the planet -- but not infinitely so. Standardization is a a big part of how they do it.

I really like Vox for the many contributions to understanding, though, and this article's a full container. Wish they'd found more room for ways to avoid this in future, though.

Are there things that we should do now to prepare for the next disaster or pandemic?

Marc Levinson: This is a business decision. Individual companies create their own supply chains. My own view is that when companies started building these complicated international supply chains, they focused overwhelmingly on production costs and on transportation costs. They didn’t pay much attention to risk, including the risk of business interruption.

In the meantime, companies are still struggling to find these boxes. Is it time maybe for us to stop building swimming pools out of shipping containers?

And small homes? Don't see that as a solution to needing them too much.

[ret5hd]

2. I have long wondered why...

What I have heard before is: There are many more containers coming in to the US than are going out (reflecting our net importation of goods) and therefore the containers "stack up" here with nowhere to go.

SO, I have long wondered why these containers are not designed to fold down, much like a cardboard box, to be shipped back in a more compact configuration.

Probably a good reason somewhere, but I would think a sufficiently strong container could be designed.

[Jilly_in_VA]

3. That is rather a cool idea

Design one. Or find a teenage friend with a great design sense, pitch them your idea, and s/he'll win a business or science prize next year for designing one!

[ret5hd]

4. That sounds a lot like work...

I'm much more into idly wondering things and annoying people. I've been told I must have a degree in PPO (pissing people off).

I guess you could say I'm an "idea man".

[Jilly_in_VA]

7. That's why I said

pitch it to a young friend. High school kids are really into this kind of stuff. Like, all the time now.

[MineralMan]

5. That's kind of a difficult thing to design, really.

I mean a folding metal box is certainly doable, but given the stacking requirements, it's going to be difficult to engineer in the needed rigidity without vastly increasing the cost and weight of the container. No doubt the idea has been considered. Let's see:


https://www.shiplilly.com/blog/collapsible-shipping-containers-solving-issue-lopsided-trade/

[JustAnotherGen]

10. Arena Products makes those

http://arenaproducts.com/

So does monoflo

Much better options available.

[muriel_volestrangler]

14. Why would a more compact configuration be important?

The ships that would take them back (or the trains/trucks to the ports) would have the same capacity for containers, whether full or empty. It could save a little in fuel if the containers didn't poke above the hull level, I suppose, but I don't think that is what stops people returning containers. The vehicles are going back to pick up more full ones to deliver anyway. If you make it so an empty container takes up half the room of a full one, you'll just send the same number of vehicles back, with either half of them with no containers, or with the containers taking up a bit less room.

[Jilly_in_VA]

20. "Deadheading"

which is what truckers call going back where you came from with an empty trailer, is inefficient and expensive. It would be far more efficient for one ship to take the equivalent of two ship's empty containers back, rather than to send the two ships back empty. Or don't you see the problem?

[muriel_volestrangler]

21. But you need both ships at the other end to pick up the full containers

If they're both going, they may as well share the load of empty containers, rather than one having them all - and the containers being more expensive to build since they're collapsible.

[Jilly_in_VA]

24. Lot of assumptions being made there. n/t

[muriel_volestrangler]

25. No.

[ProfessorGAC]

26. They Stack 10 or 12 High

Having them held together by pins instead of welds might be dangerous.
Also, disassembly & reassembly might be quite the offset in efficiency savings, although it seems to be more energy efficient.
Just an educated guess.

[Demovictory9]

6. Interesting.

[Wounded Bear]

8. Once again, economics and the curse of unintended consequences...

For many years, it has been cheaper to make and sell these boxes than it is to ship the empties around to places where they are needed.

Containers have been stacking up for years, we just haven't noticed as much until lately.

[MineralMan]

9. And that's why people are building structures out of them.

They're actually reasonably cheap to buy, and can be quickly welded together and connected walls removed to make modular structures of almost any size. It's also easy to cut openings for doors and windows, and they can be stacked on top of each other as well. Pretty cool, really.

[OriginalGeek]

11. My friend bought two of them for his cow farm

He has about 20 acres and several head of cattle that he enjoys feeding and watering at 5 in the morning before coming into work for some weird reason.

But he placed them on his property with enough space between them to park his tractor and some other useful equipment and stretched a tarp between them for a roof of sorts and now he has storage inside the units and a dry, shady place between them to fiddle with his tractor (which seems to always need fiddling with).

I try not to make fun of him too much and he occasionally gifts me with some fresh ground beef. It's a good system.

[MineralMan]

12. There are many uses for those containers.

You can buy them in pretty much any part of the country, too.

Typically, you can buy an 8' x 8' x 20' one for under $3500, although delivery will cost you, too. If you want 40' ones or High-cube ones that are about 9' high, you'll pay more than twice that amount for one that has been used just once in overseas shipping.

So, you're talking about 160 or 320 square feet of space for each container. They have double swinging doors on one end. Most places I've looked at guarantee them to be waterproof and 100% intact. You can also buy ones that have been used more, but you'd need to inspect them personally.

Of course, they have no windows or ventilation, so that's something you have to add. Some places will customize them with those for you, at a price, of course. Or, if you have the equipment, you can use cutting torches or plasma cutters to make openings in them. Really, they're just a big steel box with doors that open on one end. What you do with them is up to you and your ingenuity.

[Hekate]

18. What does it take to make them into, say, an all-weather office space? When I think "steel," I think

… very hot or very cold — needing insulation. When I think “box,” I think it needs to be raised off the ground. And that’s all aside from windows and plumbing.

It just sounds like an interesting proposition.

[MineralMan]

19. Well, in the end, it seems like using them in ways like that

ends up costing about the same as traditional construction. They're great for storage, but making them livable as office or residential space costs a lot. As you say, they're steel boxes. insulation is needed, but takes up space in such a small unit. Then, everything from adding windows to installing electrical services is more complicated, due to the materials.

Personally, I wouldn't buy them for anything but storage. For that, they're ideal. And yes, they do really need to be raised off the ground, or corrosions will destroy the contact areas quickly.

Still, many people are trying to use them in creative ways.

[Hekate]

22. Seems that several years ago the LA Times or someone had an article on nifty repurposing...

… and I was left with a whole lot of unanswered questions. Basically I agree with you.

[MineralMan]

27. One of the magazines I wrote for in the 1980s gave me an

assignment to design and build a 10'x12' workshop. The size was based on a common 120 sq. ft. size factor that did not require a building permit in many jurisdictions. That made such a small shop interesting to a lot of readers. In fact, I had a use for just such a structure at my own home, so I said, "OK."

After thinking about it for a couple of days, I sent them a sketch for the project. Their project editor asked if I could add a couple of solar features to it and if I'd mind adding a skylight and exterior made with clear redwood siding. Since the skylight and siding would be supplied by manufacturers at no cost to me, I said, "Sure." The rest of the materials would also be paid for by the magazine. Over the next couple of weeks, the design got refined by me and the project editor. In the end, it was going to be a pretty spectacular little utility building. Erected on a 12' x 20' concrete slab, it would end up having solar heating, solar lighting, use an extension cord to supply electricity to avoid another building permit requirement, and be finished inside with built-in workbenches, tool storage cabinets and have a loft area for materials storage. It also had to be designed to meet all building codes, just in case the readers needed a permit for it.

Once the specifications were finalized, I set to work, doing step-by-step photography to document techniques, just as I did for all the projects. In many ways, the little building turned out to cover the complete range of construction techniques, from building forms for the concrete slab and concrete finishing to framing the building, roofing, siding and window installation, skylight installation, electrical wiring, workbench construction and cabinetry and my unique solar heating design.

Construction took only two weeks, since the project was pretty small, really. I also designed rolling stands for several standard stationary-tools so they could be rolled out onto the concrete apron where there was more space than inside the shed. After construction, I prepared detailed drawings of everything, so the magazine's artist could create the drawings that would be published.

In the end, the project ended up as the cover article of the magazine and took up about 24 pages in the magazine itself. It was the largest, most extensive project I ever did for publication. Any reader who actually built it would learn almost all standard construction techniques and code requirement in the process. All of that stuff was explained in the text content of the article, which was also my responsibility. It was also a very enjoyable project to do, and I ended up with a lovely workshop building in my backyard as a bonus. Oh, and I got paid pretty well for the article, too.

Really, though, my point in this is to point out that it's easier to do something like that using standard construction techniques than to try to assemble shipping containers into what can only be a makeshift sort of structure. I've watched some of the videos on building with shipping containers. None of what any of them did made any real sense in the real world. Clever, but not practical.

[madville]

15. Sorry, I think it's all my fault

I have two 40' shipping containers, one on my 6 acres where I live and another out at a hunting property, probably caused this whole mess j/k.

I lucked into them, a local company was moving locations and the owner is a family friend, he had the two 40' containers on the property to store old paper records in, they're insulated and have air conditioners. Told us we could have them if we moved them by that Friday, cost $800 to have them moved, got lucky on that deal.

[Hekate]

16. Very interesting read

[FakeNoose]

17. There is an answer - we must make things that China wants to buy

Then there will be a reason to ship the containers BACK, full of our products that we're selling to them.

[SYFROYH]

23. In port cities like mine, we love the little fellas.