Shipping Hasn’t Been This Fascinating Since Tom Hanks Was a Castaway
Credit: Louis Vest
The sea is a pretty interesting place.
Think about it. The ocean is a giant body of water that covers over 70% of the planet we live on and is home to over 80% of all life on earth. Well, the first number is likely going up while the second number is definitely going down. In one year, a cargo ship can travel the equivalent of 3/4 of the way to the moon!
Now combine that with the fact that over 90% of everything you have ever, ever owned has traversed the ocean in a shipping container. And that shipping container is mounted with many, many others – in rigs larger than football fields and taller than Niagara Falls.
And no one talks about it. Nobody. There’s bound to be some really good nuggets in there somewhere, somehow.
Ships the size of dinosaurs, floating above actual dinosaurs (well, their modern cousins) across the earth. Definitely got to be a story: So we decided to take a look around. According to Port Containers USA, here’s what they found.
Everything Floats
Well, not literally. But just about everything floats on a boat before it gets to your door. If it’s locally grown or made, the materials used to package or create it came on a boat.
The food you eat, the clothes you wear, the gas burning in your furnace to warm your home, the parts in the car you drive, are only the beginning. Those silly coloured eye contacts we see hipsters wearing? Boat. Vitamins? Boat. Your plastic Guardians of the Galaxy Groot figurine? Boat. Plant seeds! Boat. Pencil crayons, notebooks, iPads, and sexy underwear – you name it — BOAT. You get it now.
Paper cups in McDonalds? Yup. Ok ok, I’m done. But I am incredibly hard pressed to think of anything from my country that hasn’t been mixed with or fashioned by something that came on a ship over the ocean. Heck, most countries will take a thing they make, grow, whatever; and then they’ll ship it to Asia through the Panama Canal, have them do something with it, and send it back for sale in the country it originated from.
Inspections? Nah!
What would you consider rare? In terms of shipping cargo; every other container being checked? 1 in 10? 1 in 100? Today’s biggest cargo ships have an 18,000 shipping container capacity. 18,000! And these suckers are 40 feet long and chock full of commercial goodness!
The kicker? Only 5% of port containers in the USA are checked for security as per Rose George, author of Ninety Percent of Everything.
Shipping is Cheap, Considering
And why do we ship everything everywhere? It’s cheap as heck.
I know what you’re thinking; you’re thinking shipping is all expensive, and prices are only going up and the mail man’s job is going the way of the do-do bird. Well that’s consumer postage; imagine what you’d pay if you reliably shipped massive quantities of items every day? I think they’d give you a discount. And they do!
On top of that, you need something to compare the cost to – something that equates on a spreadsheet. For example; hot tubs by American Standard. It says “Made in the USA” on the box, and it isn’t lying, fully. Enough is made in the USA to make the label legal, but somehow I think the cost of shipping + labour from a neighboring country still comes out cheaper than paying Americans to make them.
Same sort of thing happens all over the world. Honey can be harvested in Ireland and shipped to China for packaging and back again. It’s been this way since canals were built and ships to pass through them.
Shipping is Growing
Every facet of the shipping process is getting hit with the “make bigger” raygun – ships are getting bigger than the Titanic ever was, and canals are getting stretched out to make room for more ship volume; more ships, bigger ships. Currently that includes two of the largest shipping canals in the world, too; the Panama Canal just finished expansion, and Egypt’s Suez Canal just started.
Even shipping containers are getting bigger. And this is all symptomatic of our burgeoning global population. As of 2013, the planet had reached 7.125 billion people. That’s a lot of iPhones and Plasma TV’s.
Freaky side-fact: If people = 7.125 billion and the ocean represents 80% of all life on earth – the ocean has almost 30 million things in it! How many do you think are bigger than a cargo ship? That’s exciting! See? See what I mean? And you thought shipping cargo was boring. Shame on you.
Alright, next up.
Pirates Are Real
On land, you mess up, you go to jail. On the high seas, if you get away, don’t die, and cover your face – you’re home free.
Here are two creepy thoughts for you to chew on. Both related to ships on the ocean, the size of the ocean, and shifty behaviour on the ocean.
Pirate activity: Huge. More sea-bound pirate activity and crime happened in 2012 than all of the violent assaults in the most corrupt nation in the world: South Africa. Eh, maybe wrong word. Corrupt might get me into hot water. But they do have the world’s largest crime rate. Corruption might imply they have a choice when dealing with their hungry bellies.
A capital crime happens really, really, really often on cruise ships. Really. Google that one.
Justice on the oceans is as hard to enforce as it is on the internet. If a crime happens in international waters – or say, off the coast of Somalia, then the police of that jurisdiction are required to investigate.
However, chances are the crime happened to someone not from the jurisdiction of those same police. So the crime just goes away.
[image error]
