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 economic advantages of this truck-train-ship combination seemed overwhelming. Trucks would do the short-haul work for which they were best suited. Trains would handle the long land haul, where their costs were lowest. Shippers’ costs for the domestic leg of their international shipment would fall by half. The Pennsylvania was intrigued by the plan, the New York Central and the Baltimore and Ohio opposed. But as the Pennsylvania and the New York Central announced plans to merge, McLean’s ambitions were scuttled. The railroads made the minimum counteroffer that the ICC would allow: they would carry Sea-Land’s container cars—mixed in with other cars on their regular slow freights.