Ideal X First Container Voyage

The Ideal X voyage started container shipping, the system that makes today's low-cost global sourcing and e-commerce imports possible. McLean, a trucking company owner, saw that lifting whole trailer-size boxes on and off ships would avoid the slow, costly work of handling cargo piece by piece. In Houston, 58 trucks waited to haul the containers away, so the boxes moved from road to sea to road without being unpacked. As containerization spread, shipping costs fell sharply and port time, theft, and damage dropped. Every full container load, drayage move, and TEU count in an import plan descends from this voyage.

• Full Container LoadFCLOne shipper's goods in a whole container
• Twenty-Foot Equivalent UnitTEUContainer capacity unit of one 20-foot box
• DrayageTrucking containers from port to warehouse

• Malcom McLean1913–2001 · Father of containerization
• Keith Tantlinger1919–2011 · Engineer of the shipping container system

• Suez Crisis1956–1957 · Egypt nationalizes the canal and war closes it
• First Dockside Container Crane1959 · A Matson crane lifts containers at high speed
• Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal1962 · Port Elizabeth opens as a port built for containers

• Merchant Marine Act of 1920 (Jones Act)1920 · US-built, US-crewed ships only between US ports
• International Convention for Safe Containers (CSC)1972, in force 1977 · Treaty requiring safety approval of shipping containers

1. Port Newark: How Malcom McLean Changed the World portfolio.panynj.gov
2. The Now-Ubiquitous Shipping Container Was an Idea Before Its Time smithsonianmag.com
3. SS Ideal X en.wikipedia.org