The Box - Marc Levinson [0]
How the Shipping Container
Made the World Smaller and the
World Economy Bigger
With a new preface by the author
Marc Levinson
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
PRINCETON AND OXFORD
Copyright © 2006 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street,
Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press,
3 Market Place, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1SY
All Rights Reserved
Ninth printing, and first paperback printing, with a new preface by the author, 2008
Paperback ISBN: 978–0-691–13640-0
The Library of Congress has cataloged the cloth edition of this book as follows
Levinson, Marc.
The box: how the shipping container made the world smaller and
the world economy bigger/Marc Levinson.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978–0-691–12324-0 (hardcover: alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0–691-12324–1 (hardcover)
1. Containerization—History. 2. McLean, Malcolm Purcell, 1913–2001. I. Title.
TA1215.L47 2006
387.5’442—dc22 2005030021
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
This book has been composed in Janson text with Clarendon Family Display
Printed on acid-free paper. ∞
press.princeton.edu
Printed in the United States of America
10 9
To Aaron, Rebecca, and Deborah
Contents
Preface to the Paperback Edition
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
The World the Box Made
Chapter 2
Gridlock on the Docks
Chapter 3
The Trucker
Chapter 4
The System
Chapter 5
The Battle for New York’s Port
Chapter 6
Union Disunion
Chapter 7
Setting the Standard
Chapter 8
Takeoff
Chapter 9
Vietnam
Chapter 10
Ports in a Storm
Chapter 11
Boom and Bust
Chapter 12
The Bigness Complex
Chapter 13
The Shippers’ Revenge
Chapter 14
Just in Time
Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Preface to the Paperback Edition
Writing a book is usually a solitary venture, but The Box was a more private project than most. This was not entirely my choice. Early on in my work, when acquaintances would ask what I’d been doing, I would proudly tell them I was writing a history of the shipping container. The result of this disclosure was invariably stunned silence, as my interlocutors tried to think of something to say about a boring metal box. Eventually, I stopped talking about the book altogether, simply to avoid the embarrassment that every mention of the topic would bring.
The response to the book’s publication in the spring of 2006, then, caught me by surprise. I knew that the history of containerization would show itself to be a far more absorbing topic than readers could imagine, and I figured that economists and logistics specialists might be intrigued by my argument that tumbling transport costs were critical in opening the way to what we now call globalization. I had not the slightest clue, however, that the container was on its way to becoming something trendy. Then the invitations began to arrive. In New York, I shared a platform with architects using con tainers to design office buildings and apartments. In Genoa, I spoke alongside an entrepreneur who turned containers into temporary art galleries, while in Santa Barbara, California, the local museum joined forces with a university to promote a series of public events on ramifications of the container that I had never considered. The by millions of boxes with undetermined contents; the environmental damage caused by massive movement of cargo: all of these issues came to the fore in reviews and critical articles.
Then business executives weighed in. A leading computer manufacturer embraced The Box as a metaphor for modular products, announcing a “data center in a box.” A major oil company drew insights from the container that helped it cut the cost of exploration in the Canadian Arctic. Several consulting firms applied lessons from containerization to a variety of business problems having nothing to do with freight transportation. A software house developed the notion of a computer system that passed “containerized” pieces