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The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger

Marc Levinson

3.86 · Rating details · 4,243 ratings · 434 reviews

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 consequenc

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Kindle Edition, 531 pages

Published April 5th 2016 by Princeton University Press (first published April 9th 2006)

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Jul 05, 2017 Petra-X rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2017-100-reviews, 2017-read, reviewed, 10-star-books, misc-reference

Containerisation is globalisation. Nine ways in which shipping has changed the world.

1. All ships, trains, trailers and cranes for freight are built to the exact same standards. On a ship the tolerance on the rails that lock the containers in place is 1/4". It doesn't matter if it is a refrigerated container, a double-doors one or any of the 16 types of container, all are built to the same external and weight bearing parameters. It doesn't matter if it is in Egypt, Sydney or Cape Town, all the p ...more

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Oct 11, 2020 Bryan Alkire rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Good book. This is the sort of nonfiction I really enjoy. I get a readable book about a topic I known virtually nothing about and get to learn something. In this case, I got to learn all about the modern shipping industry through the revolution of the shipping container. The book is well balanced, covering the tech, business and human sides of the paradigm shift. The book can be a bit repetitive at the start of chapters, but that’s a minor flaw. I recommend this one for a good introduction to th ...more

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May 27, 2012 Nick Black rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommended to Nick by: Matt Travers

Shelves: snap-crackle-pop-science, likely-reread

lots of fun. Malacca-Max will likely be my favorite new word for a few weeks. my big question after reading this: what's keeping someone, say me, from building nuclear-powered megabulk carriers of truly tremendous draft, using them as motherships, driving them outside of economic exclusion zones to avoid all the hogwash nonsense nuclear regulation, and linking up with fast oil-burners for final portside delivery? you don't want cranes on your oilburners due to weight imbalance problems, but you' ...more

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Nov 22, 2013 Osamah rated it really liked it · review of another edition

We all take shipping containers for granted. We all know what they are and what purpose they serve, but did you ever stop to ponder the role they play in international commerce or how they came about to be the standard method of shipping in the world? My family has been in the shipping business since 1890 and the shipping container is something I constantly heard my father talk about since my earliest childhood: "cost per container", "offloading containers", "trucks and trailers", and so forth. ...more

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Oct 04, 2013 Paul rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Let’s be honest, the evolution of shipping containers isn’t the first thing that springs to mind for a reading list recommendation.

You might struggle to believe that interest could be sustained on the topic at article length much less for an entire book – and you’d be dead wrong.

The hum-drum box unleashed a wave of disruption that smashed union power, consigned thousands of workers to the scrapheap, devastated established city ports, uplifted backwater areas and, as an unforeseen consequence, ul Let’s be honest, the evolution of shipping containers isn’t the first thing that springs to mind for a reading list recommendation.

You might struggle to believe that interest could be sustained on the topic at article length much less for an entire book – and you’d be dead wrong.

The hum-drum box unleashed a wave of disruption that smashed union power, consigned thousands of workers to the scrapheap, devastated established city ports, uplifted backwater areas and, as an unforeseen consequence, ultimately became an engine of globalization.

Marc Levinson’s meticulously researched work takes us into a world of cartel stitch-ups, protectionist regulation, corrupt officialdom and high stakes gambles involving billions of dollars in a freight industry arms race that was ruinously expensive for many of its players.

Pioneers like trucking boss Malcolm McLean, the epitome of a self-made man, was a driving force in propelling change, but even his boundless energy after a dockside Eureka moment wasn’t enough.

Change had to be dogged out in a series of frustrating battles over standards, subsidies and route restrictions. There were bet-the-farm buy-outs, leveraged acquisitions and some nimble creative thinking to circumvent the resistance of entrenched vested interests.

It was the Vietnam War that provided one of the key breakthroughs: the military supply chain wasn’t able to keep pace with the rapid commitment of American forces and chaos ensued.

With no dedicated port facilities, supply ships had to lay-up offshore, unload cargoes onto lighters, which then had to be manhandled again at piers and docksides. On this scale, sheer muscle simply wasn’t enough and the military accepted the intervention of the private sector.

Since then, a sophisticated logistics industry has developed, one that touches our lives every day whether it’s through supermarket supply chains or just-in-time delivery of components to manufacturing plants.

The cost savings set in train by the shipping container, on labor, on warehousing, on insurance, on turnaround times, on delivery speeds, were profound. So much so, that industry no longer had to locate its factories where its customers were. China, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea with cheap pools of labor and access to US ports were able to take advantage of the new economics of the freight trade and global business was born.
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Aug 12, 2008 Jill rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: economics-and-finance

The Box tries to do many things at once - describing how the advent of the shipping container changed trade flows, transformed cities from New York City to Felixstowe to Long Beach and Oakland, and changed the nature of the livelihood of dockworkers. The Box probably fares best on the latter two fronts. Its account of the decline of NY's ports as the Port Authority of NY shifted its operations towards Elizabeth and Newark, how it led to a hollowing out of manufacturing operations and the subsequ ...more

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Jul 29, 2009 Chris rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: real-world

Forget about the internet, the container is what has made us a global village. At times fascinating and other times dryer than the hills of California this book looks at transportation evenly and thoroughly. My biggest complaint about this book is its total lack of diagrams, photos, maps, etc.. There are a few tables of data and that's it. Not even a picture of Malcom McLean, the guy who made the container a reality. The interesting thing about this subject is that no one could accurately predic ...more

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Jan 25, 2014 Phil Gross rated it really liked it · review of another edition

A little dry in parts, but the basic subject matter is fascinating.

One of the oldest, largest, and most important parts of the global economy, the shipment of goods, transformed completely in only a couple of decades. Huge ports like New York collapsed suddenly, losing tens of thousands of jobs, as all shipping moved across the river to the drained swamp of Elizabeth, NJ. Economies transformed, as moving goods went from one of the largest costs to nearly free, enabling huge supply chains and the ...more

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Aug 20, 2012 Andy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: economics-and-finance, industry, nonfiction

Fantastic history of something you wouldn't realize deserves a history. Traces the introduction of standardized containers into the modern shipping industry and examines its impact on the shipping industry itself (obviously), other transportation industries, manufacturing, labor unions, and social dynamics of waterfront cities. Enthusiastic without being too preachy, very insightful and thought-provoking, and the one accusation that could be leveled is that occasionally (just occasionally) it is Fantastic history of something you wouldn't realize deserves a history. Traces the introduction of standardized containers into the modern shipping industry and examines its impact on the shipping industry itself (obviously), other transportation industries, manufacturing, labor unions, and social dynamics of waterfront cities. Enthusiastic without being too preachy, very insightful and thought-provoking, and the one accusation that could be leveled is that occasionally (just occasionally) it is a little dry.

I found the social impact of containerization particularly interesting - I live in NYC and it is fascinating to imagine standing on the piers along the Hudson and rolling the clock backwards and seeing it turn into a bustling old-style waterfront. (This book also made me want to head out to Elizabeth to see the docks there, where all the shipping went.) I'd love to read more about what cities that lost out on shipping business did with their waterfronts. Examples of these mentioned in the book include Manhattan and Brooklyn, San Francisco, Boston, and London - all of which are considered very desirable places to live, probably with valuable office and residential buildings occupying old pier space, and it's unclear that they really lost in the long run by no longer being major ports of call.

Aside from great stories and details about the shipping industry specifically, this book is a great case study in the impact of a disruptive technology (sorry to use that now-badly-overused word, but that's what it is). Containerization illustrated many lessons about such technologies:

- It's never obvious that it's going to work at first
- The benefits are not always reaped by the first entrants
- True benefits can take many years to emerge, while other parts of the economy reshape themselves to fit the disruption
- There is not much use in fighting technological developments OR, less obviously, the repercussions they will have on society - the best we can do is smooth the way a little bit for people who are hurt to adapt
- It's not easy to predict who will benefit and who will be hurt by technological changes, and over what time frames these benefits and hurts will accumulate - any prognostication really needs to acknowledge its own limits and uncertainties

At 31, I'm too young to have experienced a world where the fruits of containerized shipping weren't at my fingertips, but I imagine that this book might be especially enjoyable for older generations of readers who might be able to trace the rise of containerization with changes in the economy they remember seeing in their lives.
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Jul 30, 2017 Wilte rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Innovation with much more far-reaching implications than you might think at first: the shipping container. Perhaps even more than on the box itself, this is a book about ports adapting and new ships.

But all in all too dull and repetitive; tonnages, millions of dollars investment, acres; the numbers keep on coming. Also sorely lacks visuals, first graph is at page 223. Why not some drawings on how new boxes are designed, with applications for cranes (similar to the cover). Now it is hard with al ...more

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Feb 13, 2013 Mick rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: international-relations-politics

The history of the humble shipping container may at first seem an odd subject for an entire book, until you consider its ubiquity and importance to the global economy. The triumph of containerization has truly changed the world, creating winners and losers. Marc Levinson's The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger charts the long, stilted development of an international standard for shipping containers and the effects this has had on economies, socie ...more

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Jan 08, 2014 Colin Wright rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This book, for me, had the same impact as taking art history classes in school. That is to say the information alone was fascinating and worthy of attention, but the overarching storyline also helped tie together disparate pieces of history to form a more cohesive whole. I love when that happens.

At times a little clunky and drowsiness-inducing (especially when there are pages and pages of number and data, which made me feel confident in the author's knowledge, but which I could have easily check ...more

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Dec 25, 2018 missheliophilia rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2018

90 percent of what we use, wear and eat is carried by ships. Anything you name can be found inside these boxes. It’s amazing to see how they make the world smaller but the world economy bigger.

3.6 stars. It’d be great to see photos included. For people who do not work in this industry, they would have a hard time to visualize.

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Feb 03, 2012 Miguel Eduardo rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Topic is really interesting. He could have told the story in half the pages though. Lots of repetition!

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Feb 18, 2015 Michael rated it it was ok · review of another edition

A seriously boring book with subject matter that would be more fascinating as a long form blog article.

Instead this book reads like a dull academic treatment.

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Jun 03, 2016 Sajith Kumar rated it liked it · review of another edition

The period after the death of Soviet Union in the early 1990s is taken to be the time globalization took birth. Though historians would propose the early 19th century in the aftermath of Napoleonic wars, or even the late 16th century after the settling of the New World as the contenders to the start of globalization, there is no denying that the last decade of the last century saw tremendous improvement in international trade. Whereas raw materials came in one direction and end products travelle The period after the death of Soviet Union in the early 1990s is taken to be the time globalization took birth. Though historians would propose the early 19th century in the aftermath of Napoleonic wars, or even the late 16th century after the settling of the New World as the contenders to the start of globalization, there is no denying that the last decade of the last century saw tremendous improvement in international trade. Whereas raw materials came in one direction and end products travelled the other in earlier times, that pattern became increasingly blurred. Manufacturers could easily source intermediate products from far off places and that too, just in time. The Barbie Doll was made entirely in the U.S. earlier. Now the doll is manufactured in China, with clothes from Korea, hair from the U.S., colour from Japan and likewise. In this catalog of the tremendous pace of manufacturing in the era of globalization, one thing stands apart as the prime factor in helping achieve the goals – cheap and fast transport of cargo from one corner of the world to the other in containers. Hardly 50 years before, nobody had used it, while now, those who don’t use it is a nobody. Marc Levinson tells the thrilling story of containers from its conceptual stages to the modern era. The style is crisp and witty. With extensively researched data on cargo, Levinson has made an excellent work that presents the complexities of international trade simplified as to be enjoyable by general readers as well. The author is an economist in New York and has authored three books earlier. He had associated with leading economics publications like the Economist.

As an introduction, Levinson presents the sorry plight of dock workers and the enormous time and money wasted in transporting goods from one end of the globe to the other. A ship normally carries tens of thousands of discrete items in one journey. In the pre-container era, each of these items were separately packaged and stowed on board. This evidently led to wastage of space, which resulted in loss to the shipping company. As a result, manufacturers preferred to set up shop as near to customers as possible. Rapid industrialization seen after the Second World War in the western countries is the result of this trend. As market dynamics shifted and low-cost, long-distance shipping was made feasible with the use of containers, employers got the upper hand in bargaining with unions. If they proved too belligerent the factory owners could relocate to a Third World country, where the labour costs were dead cheap and the transportation costs were also low. In fact this factor contributed a great deal to the rise of globalization which we now take for granted. Dock workers were a tough lot before, in terms of the job they were doing and also when they were assessed on the personal level. The longshoreman had difficulty in finding a daily job for loading and unloading the ships. The work was hard, steady and not intellectually challenging. Supply far exceeded demand which encouraged cronyism and bribery on the part of harbour masters. Sometimes the workmen had to literally fight their way for a day’s work. With the advent of reforms, such practices were curtailed and with the coming of containers such jobs were effaced out of the industry altogether.

Malcolm Purcell McLean was the man who turned pivotal in the development of containers. Curiously he had no idea about shipping when he began his business of transportation through trucks. He used containers for lorry transport, which reduced the loading and unloading times. In a bid to expand his operations, McLean transported entire trucks on board ships to save costs. This gradually led to the containers themselves placed on the deck, which can be loaded to a waiting truck at the destination. McLean acquired shipping companies to try his novel ideas and his Pan Atlantic shipping line introduced the Sea-Land service, which later became a byname for container freight. On April 26, 1956, a ship sailed from Port Newark to Houston with containers, heralding a new era in the history of maritime trade. However, the new device didn’t find favour with labour unions that effectively ruled the Atlantic and Pacific costs of the U.S., wringing concession after concession from the shipping lines. Limitations of geography and traffic congestion were eating into the worthiness of New York’s ports, shifting the business to New Jersey coast. Unions took a demanding line in negotiations with the management in the general atmosphere of New York’s declining business and loss of jobs due to automation. Levinson paints a gruesome picture of the dock environment in which unions exercised their will under the always present threat of strike. In any industry, the management exploits the workers till they are organized into unions. The tide then reverses, in which the power conferred by collective bargaining constrain the management in no small measure. On the west coast of the country, ILWU, the more pragmatic of the unions reached a mechanization and modernization agreement with the ship lines in 1960, which was realized by the employers paying a huge sum of money in the form of guaranteeing income of workers who stood to lose their jobs on the account of automation and also to ensure sufficient funds for retirement of the workers. The east coast workers also reached a similar agreement in the form of guaranteed annual income. The chapter titled ‘Union Disunion’ presents a ring side view of the dock labour environment in the U.S. during the 50s and 60s.

When we look at the inventions that have since became ubiquitous, we tend to wonder at how the society could have lived without it, before it came into being. Electricity is one such thing and judging from the book, containers also deserve mention in that group. The entire shipping is now dominated by containers, thanks to its inherent advantages like low cost and less time for loading and unloading. However, Levinson presents a different story in the first decade since the first ship sailed with containers in 1956. The size of the box was not standardized. This released a huge set of problems in the shipping arena that was still smarting from its introduction. The cranes, trucks and rail cars used for transporting one company’s containers couldn’t be used for containers of other ship lines. Standards-making agencies like American Standards Association (ASA) and International Standards Organization (ISO) immediately entered the fray to make norms for sizing individual containers. After hectic deliberations that involved countries from both sides of the Atlantic, the world eventually settled on boxes having lengths in multiples of 10 feet, the most commonly used being 20 footers. As the standard war was heating up American shipping, Europe and Asia waited for finalization of it. So when the standards were adopted, they quickly came on the fray and derived maximum benefit out of it. Even now, the top six positions in terms of world container traffic are occupied by Asian ports – Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Busan and Kaoshung. Containers got a big boost in international shipping which helped ease the logical nightmares faced by the U.S. military in Vietnam in 1956. Over a period of a few months, the military was thoroughly convinced of the efficiency of containers. Even with all this, it is ironic to learn that the father of containerization, Malcom McLean died a bankrupt, having lost his money in shipping after his plans were upset by geopolitics in the form of unexpected falls and rallies of oil price. All the container ships around the world sounded their whistles at the instant of McLean’s cremation as a mark of respect.

The book could have done better with a few photographs that would add interest. Levinson sells his ideas on containers with conviction, but some of the claims seem to be a little too tall. He assigns the great increase in international trade to the better conditions provided by containerization. This is hardly the case. Apart from easing some of the bottlenecks that was hindering trade expansion, containers were greatly affected by the oscillating equations of global commerce and its pricing policies. Instead of asserting one to be the direct offspring of the other, we can only grant that globalization and containerization are the two streams that merged to produce the revolution that we see today. The book includes a fine section of notes, a good bibliography and a thorough index.

This book is highly recommended.
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Jan 29, 2020 Josh Friedlander rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: economic-history

In the introduction the author recalls telling people he was writing a history of shipping containers only to be met with stunned silence. What more boring topic is imaginable? But since the book came out, containers are in; in art, architecture, history, and even computer programming. Levinson argues that the container's importance as catalyst of globalisation may have shaped the modern economic landscape more than any other factor, although it's hard to corroborate - the book is intentionally In the introduction the author recalls telling people he was writing a history of shipping containers only to be met with stunned silence. What more boring topic is imaginable? But since the book came out, containers are in; in art, architecture, history, and even computer programming. Levinson argues that the container's importance as catalyst of globalisation may have shaped the modern economic landscape more than any other factor, although it's hard to corroborate - the book is intentionally written without quantitative support, perhaps owing to the paucity of data.

The core story is in many ways a neoliberal parable, with technological innovation and the irrepressible entrepreneur Malcolm McLean overcoming corrupt and inefficient dockers' unions, who wish to oppose progress even as their jobs become less and less relevant. But Levinson, a former Economist reporter with a fairly eclectic background, is too good a historian to paint things only one way. In a detailed - too detailed? - history of negotiations between the longshoremen's union and port authorities in San Francisco, a deal was struck whereby a tax on the new shipping containers would pay to make up for lost jobs, paying people for eight-hour days until retirement and preserving their pensions, while reducing the amount of new hires. Automation thus actually brought about better conditions (less physical strain, and fixed instead of provisional work), though ultimately there would be fewer jobs. And It was less fun - the romance of the docks was gone for good, with famous port towns replaced by large, factory-like ports in little-known cities. (A rare bird this: a labour history written by a neoliberal!)

Not just shipping jobs, either: the great decline in American manufacturing, and some of the politics of our moment, can be traced to the evisceration of shipping costs, which drastically shrunk the planet. In the global, hyperefficient market, there is room only for a few large players, and most port cities - and shipping lines and manufacturing industries - will lose. Today's behemoths are globe-striding conglomerates such as Maersk (formally Danish) and Mediterranean Shipping Company (Swiss). Previously shipping company were national and often regulated and subsidised; the US still has on its books the Jones Act, which requires ships trading between US ports to be American built and crewed, and it's unlikely to be repealed anytime soon.

There are definitely some tedious parts in this book (an entire chapter on ideal box size and design!) But I'm glad I read it: it tells the history of an unsexy, little-recognised, low-margin industry, that is intimately connected to every product we buy. ...more

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Nov 03, 2019 Siddharth rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, 2019-wishlist, historical, wartime

This is a great book! I started reading this book because I realized how much shipping has changed the things that one has access to, it was also part of the book recommendations on one of the Ezra Klein Show podcast episodes. I don't remember who recommended this book anymore or in what context, though! I am glad I read it nonetheless.

First, a brief word about the good stuff. This is a comprehensive and very very detailed account of how containers started, who started using them, how they came

First, a brief word about the good stuff. This is a comprehensive and very very detailed account of how containers started, who started using them, how they came to be standardized and why they make sense beyond a given scale. It refers to a lot of incidents that proved to be rather important for the adoption of containers: the aftermath of the second World War, the Vietnam war, dockworkers unions across the world, shipping companies, freight forwarders, railroad operators, trucking companies. It's hard to think of anyone from the factory right up to the end consumer that this book doesn't touch or talk about.

Perhaps the most stunning thing throughout the book is the consistent resistance that container shipping had from every single person involved in the old process: unions didn't like container shipping, ports didn't like containers, governments weren't really convinced and were far too slow to adopt or create the specifications for standardized containers. Undoubtedly, a significant percentage of the time, most of the resistance ends in a placid acceptance and a sudden interest in getting deeply involved in the process of container shipping (in the form of huge government investment in modernising ports, subsidising the building of containes and container ships, negotiating contracts with shipping carriers that promise them space and cargo at ports)

There is one caveat though: The book is long, and it's not very coherent, the author chose to tell the story of how containers took over global shipping not as a timeline starting from non-container shipping (break-bulk) to container shipping, and rather, as a story of incidents which overlap in time, but are mostly independent in place and time of occurence. That makes the book confusing to read because there are several references to what happened in 1967 and it gets harder and harder to understand in the first half of the book until it all comes together in the second half of the book. That is my only gripe with the book.

Nevertheless, it's an incredibly informative book about a fairly simple concept's hard journey from being an idea to the finished product that now powers all global commercial shipping.

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Jun 27, 2018 William Bentrim rated it liked it · review of another edition

The Box by Marc Levinson

The box is the ubiquitous metal container that is seen at loading docks, on the back of semi-trucks, at harbors and wherever goods are transported. According to Levinson, the container changed the worlds economy.

Surprisingly this non-fiction book was more interesting than I expected. The introduction of shipping goods by containers revolutionized international shipping. It changed the geographic aspects of commerce due to the location of ports acceptable to container shi ...more

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Apr 08, 2019 Madhav rated it liked it · review of another edition

It's decent book capturing a lot of details about shipping, however, there are very few business lessons that you can take away. As a read it is super dry and dull, lacks metaphors or stories. It feels like a PhD dissertation on Shipping. I was disappointed that the author doesn't write about how modularization (containerization) made a difference to people's lives, perhaps that's not the point of the book.

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Aug 08, 2020 Deepak Gulati rated it it was ok

Shelves: abandoned, book-club

A lot of potential but marred by some very dry writing. And a book like this could've really done with more illustrations, pictures, graphs and tables.

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Aug 29, 2018 Georgina rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This book had a great pace, a very interesting read.

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Aug 10, 2014 Ethan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

You might think that the Cliffs Notes summary of The Box would be enough. Yes, the shipping container revolutionized the global economy by almost eliminating considerations of shipping cost and geographic proximity in the manufacturing supply chain. This development allowed factories to locate essentially anywhere - not just near transportation hubs - and so radically reshaped longstanding trade patterns and practices. It’s not too extreme to say that the shipping container played an oversized r You might think that the Cliffs Notes summary of The Box would be enough. Yes, the shipping container revolutionized the global economy by almost eliminating considerations of shipping cost and geographic proximity in the manufacturing supply chain. This development allowed factories to locate essentially anywhere - not just near transportation hubs - and so radically reshaped longstanding trade patterns and practices. It’s not too extreme to say that the shipping container played an oversized role in making manufactured goods widely accessible and affordable at a scale previously unattained, so increasing the standard of living of hundreds of millions of people.

But if you stopped there, you would miss the fascinating and by no means inevitable story of just how the entrepreneurs behind the container effected such powerful change. Levinson does not focus exclusively on the shipping container itself, but shows how broader trade systems and relationships were required to change the box to make its impact. His assiduous research convincingly quantifies the impact of each development, with the mountain of data only occasionally obscuring the human narrative.

The most optimistic lesson of The Box is that entrepreneurial energy can harness technology to upend even the most ossified, over-regulated, labor-dominated industries for the greater benefit of people. After WWII, the shipping industry was completely regulated, heavily unionized, and centrally controlled, including (especially) in the United States, with little mechanical interoperability. No, one, certainly not regulators or workers, was trying to innovate or otherwise improve the system. The introduction and widespread deployment of the shipping container and related inventions and trade practices upended the industry, greatly increasing trade around the world - without needing to start with central regulatory or labor reform. The case of the shipping container demonstrates that better technology can overcome entrenched regulation and obsolete work restrictions (foreshadowing how Uber and similar services are dismantling the corrupt taxi cartels.)

What’s more, container entrepreneurs didn’t just invent a new form of storage and ships to carry it, but also knit together the entire supporting infrastructure - from reworking the contract structures of the trucking industry to creating consortia to agree on standardized designs for new harbor equipment. They actually worked together, legally and productively, to revolutionize the very basis of trade - without any central regulatory push. While I don't think self-regulation works in every case in every industry - banking and related financial services have not earned any credibility on this front - Levinson makes a persuasive case for how shipping entrepreneurs "hacked" (my term) the system for the good of all.

Of course some shipping centers refused to accommodate the standardized container (largely because labor unions were unwilling to update agreements to accommodate the new technology), and their ultimate demise caused localized economic pain - "good" jobs and trade were lost. But even more communities embraced the new system, enabling rich trade centers to grow where previously geographically impossible. The overarching testament of the The Box is that economics and trade are not a zero sum game - that reducing cost while increasing quality and reliability can radically increase overall demand for a service. That if something is easier, cheaper, and better, then more people will buy it. The size of the pie increases enough so that all participants in the system, including both the entrepreneurs who take risks to innovate and the workers who enable the trade, actually benefit from the plummeting of costs of transactions.

The Box is fundamentally data-driven. A few colorful personalities emerge, but Levinson builds the story primarily on how and where trade flowed, and the before/after effects of specific policies and technologies. While this approach of course buttresses its credibility, The Box is therefore likely to appeal those of a wonkish bent - entrepreneurs, technologists, inventors, policy-makers, and investors who want to understand the nuts of and bolts of one of the most far-reaching and beneficial innovations in history.
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Oct 01, 2017 Fred Forbes rated it liked it · review of another edition

You probably never thought much about it, I would bet. Me neither. You know, those big, ugly metal boxes - take them off the ship with specialized cranes, bolt them to a truck or stack them two high on a flat bed train car and get them where they are going. And vice versa. What could be more obvious that needing a standard to build to so all the moving and structural parts function together? Well, it may be common sense in hindsight but to the longshoremen on the piers of New York who used to lo ...more

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Feb 26, 2018 Larry rated it it was ok · review of another edition

This book is really much more of a historical account of different business strategies than anything to do with the engineering of the shipping container and surrounding infrastructure. The first chapter and illustration of the book cover led me to believe that this book would be more turned towards technical detail. Instead it's more of an exhaustive blow-by-blow account of 40 years of business dealings starting in the early 60s until the late 70s.
There was a painful lack of diagrams. Bizarrely ...more

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Aug 10, 2008 Hunterwalk rated it it was ok · review of another edition

would have been better as a long Atlantic/NYer article. Only read if you're really into transportation and logistics.

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Jan 16, 2020 Jacek Bartczak rated it really liked it · review of another edition

1) Book describes many tactics that happened in the middle of the XIX century - most of them are common today (like for instance "total cost of X". Hunting for new, unique and mind-blowing tips isn't the only way of boosting sales performance. Some things which worked in 1960 still work in 2020.

2) Chapters about the shipping industry in 1950 weren't much different than books which describe what happened in Airbnb / Uber in 201X - our generation is not such unique, nor are companies where we work 1) Book describes many tactics that happened in the middle of the XIX century - most of them are common today (like for instance "total cost of X". Hunting for new, unique and mind-blowing tips isn't the only way of boosting sales performance. Some things which worked in 1960 still work in 2020.

2) Chapters about the shipping industry in 1950 weren't much different than books which describe what happened in Airbnb / Uber in 201X - our generation is not such unique, nor are companies where we work

3) What Steve Jobs made in the mobile phone industry, Malcolm McLean made for the shipping industry.

4) Overlooked opportunities: Nokia in 200Xs overlooked smartphones, in 195Xs The Port of New York overlooked containers. Both faced regression, both survived, but they both exist because of different parts od their business than before the missed opportunities.

5) Without McLean's hustle, the Vietnam War would become compromisation earlier than it was (because of lack of efficiency in sea shipments in the US army)

6) People tend to think about innovation like: "one day the X was invented and the new reality began". The invention of the container was just a first step in the transformation of the shipping industry (which is now mostly based on containers). It wouldn't change anything until cranes, ships, ports, labor and entire ecosystem necessary to move freight were adjusted. Those adjustments weren't quick and cheap. The same in SMB - big change is rarely caused by just one "golden bullet".

7) Today to make complex things simpler companies use packages, manhours, seats, etc. The simplification of moving freight started from the container. Earlier ships spent more time at ports than at sea. If you offer complex services and struggle with a question "what should I do to make it less costly and more processed" or "what should I do to make price estimation faster" that book may help you.

8) Business content readers (including me) tend to complain that examples are too general or not enough details are provided. This book helps slightly reconsider expectations about the level of details (cranes, vessels, transportation fees, transportation law, Sometimes the level of precision-made consumption difficult.

9) Description of complex things should be based on graphics, not on long descriptions.

10) The USA - the capitol of capitalism and freedom. But some transportation services could be made only by US ships with the US crew. Freedom - yes. Protection of local companies - as well.

11) Before that book, I had no clue about the shipping industry. "The box" helped me learn many details and nuances. I strongly recommend you undertake such learning experience - from "no clue" to detailed descriptions about how dozens of aspects influence each other. Like rules in labor unions in New York in 196X and the percentage of Asian televisions in Germany 40 years later.

12) Current global leaders of the containership industry entered this industry several years after pioneers. As the author claims their management and finance raising skills were far more important than maritime knowledge. It seems that no one told them that "each industry has its own specification" and "in our industry it works differently". Of course, the industry know-how is important, but gaining that know-how quickly and efficiently is very possible. Even in such a quantifiable industry where the time of the loading of each container is optimized to seconds.

13) If you're addicted to the hunting of low hanging fruits - don't read it. ...more

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Jul 04, 2018 Jack Gardner rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: history, nonfiction-literature, economics

Adventure in Shipping

Fascinating story of the vision and perseverance of one entrepreneur revolutionizing a disorganized, incompatible shipping hodgepodge into global dominance. In the process, changing labor regulations, ship designs, relocating port destinations, and lowering product costs around the world.

Economic globalization of trade is founded on the marriage of computer tracking capabilities and the standardization of shipping containers and handling facilities from trucks to railroads t ...more

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Jul 20, 2020 ROBERT rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

2.7 rounded up to 3. I skimmed a ton.

The subject was fascinating. How container shipping changed freight and helped create globalization. The problem was that the writing became too pedantic. He covered fifty years of labor unrest, the constant refitting of the different ports fighting for the new business, the refitting of the boats and the changing shipping centers. I just got bogged down. The discussions about the need to standardize the dimensions of the box were interesting.

Levinson really ...more

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Sep 24, 2017 Kuldeep Dhankar rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

The modern world is a fantastically complex system. So many levers are involved in shifting the world that it is impossible to make sense of how the modern world came into being. This book is the history on one such lever : this shipping container. It chronically in excellent prose the human cost and the shifting stances of business & state. No one really knew how to deal with the container and it changed the world at very profound levels.

An absolute must read ...more

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About Marc Levinson

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“By far the biggest expense in this process was shifting the cargo from land transport to ship at the port of departure and moving it back to truck” — 1 likes

“In 1961, before the container was in international use, ocean freight costs alone accounted for 12 percent of the value of U.S. exports and 10 percent of the value of U.S. imports.” — 1 likes

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