The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger - Second Edition with a new chapter by the author

by Marc Levinson

The Warrior was loaded with 5,015 long tons of cargo, mainly food, merchandise for sale in post exchanges, household goods, mail, and parts for machines and vehicles. It also carried 53 vehicles. The cargo comprised an astonishing 194,582 individual items of every size and description. These goods arrived in Brooklyn in 1,156 separate shipments from 151 different U.S. cities, with the first shipment arriving at the dock more than a month before the vessel sailed. Each item was placed on a pallet prior to storage in the transit shed. Longshoremen loaded the ship by lowering the pallets into the hold, where the men physically removed each item from its pallet and stowed it, using $5,031.69 worth of lumber and rope to hold everything in place. The longshoremen worked one eight-hour shift per day, excluding Sunday, and required 6 calendar days (including a day lost to a strike) to load the ship. Steaming across the Atlantic took 10½ days, and unloading at the German end, where longshoremen worked around the clock, took 4 days. In sum, the ship spent half the total duration of the voyage docked in port. The last of its cargo arrived at its ultimate destination 33 days after the Warrior docked at Bremerhaven, 44 days after it departed New York, and 95 days after the first Europe-bound cargo was dispatched from its U.S. point of origin.