A steel box cut shipping costs enough to remake world trade

Before 1956, loading a cargo ship by hand often cost more than the ocean voyage itself. Truck owner Malcom McLean's standardized steel container let cranes move goods between ship, rail and truck without ever unpacking them, collapsing handling costs. Cheaper shipping helped make offshored factories and globally dispersed supply chains economically possible.

— Marc Levinson, The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger — Princeton University Press, 2006 (rev. 2016)
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