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

This new maritime geography brought decidedly non-traditional trade patterns. Exports from southern France might move most cheaply through Le Havre, on the English Channel. Imports for Scotland might ride the train from southeastern England. Japanese cargo headed for San Francisco Bay might well be imported through Seattle rather than Oakland, with the ship line’s saving of one day’s steaming time in each direction outweighing the cost of putting some of the cargo on a train from Seattle to California. Port cities along the Gulf of Mexico increasingly did their European and Asian trade through Charleston or Los Angeles, because ship lines deemed sailing to the Gulf uneconomic. The Hampton Roads of Virginia displaced Baltimore as a major load center through no fault of Baltimore’s, but because a ship line serving Europe could make four more trips per year from Hampton Roads—and when a $60 million ship was involved, those four trips could spell the difference between profit and loss.