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

By the 1980s, new ships holding the equivalent of 4,200 20-foot containers could move a ton of cargo at 40 percent less than could a ship built for 3,000 containers and at one-third the cost of a vessel designed for 1,800.