No longer did shipments have to be broken down into boxes and crates and sacks and hoisted around by hordes of longshoremen, taking up many days in port and adding substantially to costs. Instead, packed into containers, they could be lifted by cranes, with the operator high above in a cabin, and moved between shore and ship. The world of longshoremen that had been depicted just a couple of years earlier in the 1954 film On the Waterfront was on its way out.
