First Dockside Container Crane

Purpose-built shore cranes made container shipping fast enough to change the economics of trade. Matson found in 1957 that no crane on the market could handle its loads, so Pacific Coast Engineering Company (PACECO) designed an A-frame crane with welded box girders that went into service at Alameda in 1959. The American Society of Mechanical Engineers credits these cranes with cutting ship turnaround from about three weeks to eighteen hours. Every container a brand imports today crosses a descendant of this crane, and crane productivity at the discharge port still affects how long a box waits before drayage can pick it up.

• Intermodal FreightFreight moved by rail and truck in one box
• Twenty-Foot Equivalent UnitTEUContainer capacity unit of one 20-foot box
• Full Container LoadFCLOne shipper's goods in a whole container

• Malcom McLean1913–2001 · Father of containerization

• Ideal X First Container Voyage1956 · The first commercially successful container ship sails
• Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal1962 · Port Elizabeth opens as a port built for containers

1. #85 PACECO Container Crane (ASME) asme.org
2. Container crane (Wikipedia) en.wikipedia.org