Page 3 - Al-Rashed Newsletter July 2022

The Future of Shipping Containers

The intermodal shipping container was born back in 1956 by an American entrepreneur Malcom
McLean and has since revolutionized shipping and global trade. For years Malcolm wondered
how he could get his trucking company’s entire cargo loaded onto a shipping vessel as quickly
and efficiently as possible. He started working with engineer Keith Tantlinger to engineer the
world’s first shipping container. Since then shipping containers standard format remains
unchanged till time. Today’s modern shipping vessels can carry over 20,000 TEU shipping
containers (Twenty-Foot Equivalent Units). There are currently 20 million shipping containers ‘on
the water’ travelling between countries all over the world. Most people don’t know it or appreciate
it, but today over 90% of purchased items have been transported inside a shipping container.
Over the years there has been a drastic increase in shipping containers and led to space crunch
on vessels. This led to the possibility of collapsing containers, whereby more containers could be
accommodated.

How collapsible shipping containers can be used throughout the supply chain.
If you’re a shipping line this problem may be a familiar one: you load your products into
containers and send them off to wherever their destination is, but there isn’t an equal size
shipment at the destination that needs to come back your way. So when the containers are
returned, they’re empty. All this has accomplished is an unfortunate waste of time and money, as
each empty container takes up space that could be used to transport other goods. But what
choice do you have? After all, you need to get the containers back, and there’s no other way to
do it, right? Here comes the importance of collapsible shipping containers. This could be the
future of shipping containers.
Once they are folded flat, about four of the containers can fit in the space that would otherwise
be occupied by one regular container. The containers are designed to easily fold flat using
equipment like reach stackers. On top of that, they can be handled and stacked just like any
other shipping container.