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 result was that the early rates for containers were based not on the cost of container shipping, but on the cost of breakbulk freight. If a container held mixed freight, each item was charged only slightly less than if it were moving in a breakbulk ship. Containers filled with a single product received discounts that were larger, but not generous. At the start of service from Europe to Australia in 1969, for example, a Welsh refrigerator plant could save only 11 percent from breakbulk rates by shipping full containers of its product, and almost nothing by sending small shipments that would travel in mixed containers along with other cargo. Full refrigerated containers of Australian meat went to Britain at a fairly meager 8.65 percent discount from the breakbulk rate.