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 total cost of moving the goods carried by the Warrior came to $237,577, not counting the cost of the vessel’s return to New York or interest on the inventory while in transit. Of that amount, the sea voyage itself accounted for only 11.5 percent. Cargo handling at both ends of the voyage accounted for 36.8 percent of the outlay. This was less than the 50 percent or more often cited by shipping executives—but only because Germany’s “economic miracle” had yet to drive up longshore wages; the authors noted that port costs would have been much higher were it not for the fact that German longshoremen earned less than one-fifth the wages of U.S. longshoremen. Their conclusion was that reducing the costs of receiving, storing, and loading the outbound cargo in the U.S. port offered the best method of reducing the total cost of shipping. The authors went beyond the normal admonitions to improve longshoremen’s productivity and eliminate inefficient work rules, and urged a fundamental rethinking of the entire process. “Perhaps the remedy lies in discovering ways of packaging, moving and stowing cargo in such a manner that breakbulk is avoided,” they wrote.