The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger

by Marc Levinson

“Contrary to what had been thought at first, the handling of containers led to hardly any cost savings,”

Cost structures changed dramatically with the arrival of second-generation containerships

The cost of shipping a 40-foot box from Europe to New York, $2,000 in the middle of 1979, was below $1,000 by the summer of 1980.

Deregulation changed everything.