by Marc Levinson
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Product Description
In April 1956, a refitted oil tanker carried fifty-eight shipping containers from Newark to Houston. From that modest beginning, container shipping developed into a huge industry that made the boom in global trade possible. The Box tells the dramatic story of the container's creation, the decade of struggle before it was widely adopted, and the sweeping economic consequences of the sharp fall in transportation costs that containerization brought about. Published on the fiftieth anniversary of the first container voyage, this is the first comprehensive history of the shipping container. It recounts how the drive and imagination of an iconoclastic entrepreneur, Malcom McLean, turned containerization from an impractical idea into a massive industry that slashed the cost of transporting goods around the world and made the boom in global trade possible. But the container didn't just happen. Its adoption required huge sums of money, both from private investors and from ports that aspired to be on the leading edge of a new technology. It required years of high-stakes bargaining with two of the titans of organized labor, Harry Bridges and Teddy Gleason, as well as delicate negotiations on standards that made it possible for almost any container to travel on any truck or train or ship. Ultimately, it took McLean's success in supplying U.S. forces in Vietnam to persuade the world of the container's potential. Drawing on previously neglected sources, economist Marc Levinson shows how the container transformed economic geography, devastating traditional ports such as New York and London and fueling the growth of previously obscure ones, such as Oakland. By making shipping so cheap that industry could locate factories far from its customers, the container paved the way for Asia to become the world's workshop and brought consumers a previously unimaginable variety of low-cost products from around the globe.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 The prosaic box that changed our world, 2008-10-20
Shipping containers are prosaic and uninteresting, but they are key to the way we live our lives and earn our livings.
Globalization has had a profound impact on how we work, how we shop and how we live. One of the key enablers of globalization is low cost reliable shipping. Shipping container and the specialized ships, ports, trains and trucks that haul them are key to that. Marc Levinson's book describes their history and how they came to have such a key role in our economy.
The Box describes the world of shipping before containerization, when everything was shipped breakbulk when longshoremen and their powerful unions controlled the docks. Levinson focuses on Malcom McLean, the entrepreneur who was the driving force behind the acceptance of the container. The Box describes the difficult process of getting containers past the unions that controlled the docks and bureaucracies that controlled shipping prices.
The author also describes the boom and bust cycles that followed container shipping's acceptance. We read about the many false starts and experiments along the way. What we have ended up with may seem obvious now, but it was not fifty years ago when this started. He also describes the effect of containers on ports and labor in the ports. The huge effect containerization has had on global industries is reviewed from a high level.
The Box is well researched with extensive end notes and a large bibliography. The author writes well and has included enough about the people involved to keep the book from being too dry. This is a business and economics history, so it will probably only be of interest to a narrow group of readers, despite how important the topic is.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Great overview of how containers changed the way we live., 2008-08-05
Levinson does an excellent job of describing life before the container and how its introduction was a catalyst for vast socio-economic changes. I like the way he carved up the book into manageable pieces where each chapter examined one aspect of these changes: ports, unions, dockworkers, etc.
Drawback is that some photos, graphs, etc should have been included to illustrate some of Levinson's points, especially the technical aspects of the container, the ships and how the box is loaded/unloaded.
Also, the book loses energy over the last few chapters. Once we get to the part where container shipping is established, the book then dlves into some ups and downs of the industry as we roll thru economic/energy shocks of the 70/80s. This is relatively uninteresting following Levinson's brilliant prose showing how The Box came to be.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 How shipping containers shortened the life span of petrochemical-civilization , 2008-02-28
Mark Levinson has written a book that shows how containers made global trade possible. In the preface of the paperback edition, he notes other aspects of containerization he became aware of later, such as the potential for containers to harbor atomic weapons, how they've become homes, and so on.
To me, what Levinson leaves out is how this global distribution system will make it very difficult to go back to local production as energy declines. He also doesn't mention that containerization was the fastest way yet for capitalism to loot the planet and strip Mother Earth down to her hard dry skin.
In 2005, roughly 18 million containers worldwide made over 200 million trips (wikipedia). Containers come in many sizes, an average one is 40 feet long, 8 feet wide, and 8 feet high, the size of three 10 by 10 foot bedrooms. There are 1,300 foot-long ships now that can carry 7,250 of them.
It's mind boggling to think about how different the world is now. My grandparents ate what was in season, an orange was a precious Christmas gift. Today, the Japanese are eating Wyoming beef and we're driving Japanese cars.
Before containers were used to move cargo, port cities had long piers where boxes and bales were moved by sweat and muscle onto ships. Longshoremen lived within two miles of the docks in cheap housing. Now the piers are gone and the only sweat comes from yuppies on treadmills in luxury apartments.
The cost of moving products by any means, whether truck, train, or ship, was often so high most goods were made locally. Factories were often located near ports to shorten the distance of getting products to ships.
The idea of containerization was around for a long time, and a few companies experimented with doing this and failed for various reasons. It took Malcolm McLean, the founder of Sea-Land, and standardization, to make containerization really take off.
The cost of shipping goods, whether the container was on land or water, dropped so drastically, that suddenly it made more economic sense for a factory to be located wherever land, labor, and electricity were inexpensive. Millions of high-paying factory jobs were lost as containerization made it possible for factories to move overseas.
Also very important was being able to get goods cheaply to a container port. The price of labor in Africa might even be less than China, but Africa has few container ports, so factories don't move there.
Containerization was a major revolution - instead of endless loading and unloading each box from trucks, to trains, to ships, moving cargo became so much simpler and cheaper that the cost to move cargo was no longer a major consideration. This made longer supply chains became possible. The example Levinson gives in his book is how Barbie dolls are manufactured. America ships China the cotton, molds, and pigments used to make Barbie, Japan the nylon hair, and Taiwan the plastic in her body. This allows Japan to get really, really good at nylon hair, and make it far cheaper.
The history of container ships contains a valuable lesson about why capitalism has hastened the collapse of petro-civilization. After the energy crises of the '70s, U. S. Lines built slow, energy efficient ships. Fuel had gone from 25% of operating costs in 1972 to 50% in 1975. If oil had gone to $50 per barrel as expected, U. S. Lines would have had the most profitable shipping line plying the ocean. But oil plunged to $14 a barrel, and the bankruptcy was the largest in history. Capitalism can only see profit this microsecond; it has no plans for the future.
Wham! Imagine what will happen when the energy crisis strikes forever, and only the military and politically connected have gasoline. It's great that container ships carry cargo efficiently, and perhaps can be towed by giant kites (experiments are underway). But what can be shipped with inland factories scattered across several continents? Most containers carry intermediate parts, not complete Barbies -- how will all the bits and pieces of Barbie find each other?
With limited energy, it will be hard to go back in time, to rebuild long docks, local factories, and all the other sail-based infrastructure. The Railroad tracks feeding ships and inland regions have been ripped out, leaving the majority of inland transport to highly inefficient gas-guzzling trucks that run on rough roads and rusting bridges. Humpty Dumpty didn't just fall off the wall, where we could have glued him back, he's been blown up, his ashes scattered around the world, and there's not enough time or energy to put him back together again.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Great book for explaining the modern global economy, 2008-02-15
An interesting historic account of the rise of containerized shipping, whose success has completely changed the modern world economy. Nothing will ever be the same again as long as container ships are here.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Decent enough book, but why avoid the details?, 2007-11-19
I blame a lack of technical, scientific, and mathematical education in the United States. Okay, seriously, this seems to be a general problem with most general-audience books. An absolute inability or unwillingness (not sure which it is) to have any technical details, or anything technical at all, present. Figures? Illustrations? Numbers? Nope. Really, people can cope. And those who can't will just skip past while those who can feel relief at not being talked down to again.
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