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 other competitor in the race around the world was an equally self-confident shipping magnate, Malcom McLean. In 1982, his United States Lines placed orders for 14 gigantic containerships. By building at Korea’s Daewoo shipyard, the company forfeited any rights to U.S. government construction subsidies but won the freedom to deploy the vessels where it chose, without government involvement. Each new ship could carry the equivalent of 4,482 20-foot boxes, half again as much as Evergreen’s G-class vessels. The ships were wide, flat, and utilitarian, designed—in the words of their architect, Charles Cushing—to look “much like a big shoe box above the water.” McLean’s strategy was different from Chang’s. His ships would circle the globe only in an east-bound direction, and they would do so slowly. McLean had learned from his mistakes with the speedy SL-7s, whose fuel bills ate up all their profits. The new ships were built for an era of expensive oil. They would conserve fuel by sailing at only 18 knots, taking longer than Evergreen’s vessels to sail around the world.