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

America’s international trade was overwhelmingly oriented toward Europe; excluding petroleum and other tanker cargoes, barely 11 percent of imports and exports passed through Pacific ports in 1955. Counting petroleum and chemicals, all the West Coast ports together handled less cargo in a year than New York City alone.4