The Box - Marc Levinson [74]
The MH-5 committee’s first act was to ask the Marad committees to withdraw from the scene. The maritime industry alone should not be making decisions about standardization, MH-5 officials argued; the process should involve other affected industries, and should include foreign organizations so that the standards might eventually apply globally. The Marad committees refused to wait for a decade-long international process. They carried on over the winter of 1959, debating maximum weights, lifting methods, and the pros and cons of requiring steel posts every eight feet along container walls rather than just at the corners. The MH-5 subcommittees, involving many of the same participants, went to work on the same issues. The MH-5 subcommittee on dimensions quickly reached a consensus that all pairs of lengths in use or about to be used—12 and 24 feet, 17 and 35 feet, 20 and 40 feet—would be considered “standard.” The subcommittee rejected only a proposal to endorse 10-foot containers, because members thought them too small to be efficient, and, in any case, none were planned.8
The MH-5 process was dominated by trailer manufacturers, truck lines, and railroads. These interests wanted to reach a decision on container sizes quickly, because once standard dimensions were approved, the domestic use of containers was expected to burgeon. The specifics mattered less: within the limits set by state laws, trucks and railroads could accommodate almost any length and weight. The maritime interests that were influential in the Marad committees, in contrast, cared greatly about the specifics. A ship built with cells for 27-foot containers could not easily be redesigned to carry 35-foot containers. Most ships then carrying containers had ship-board cranes built to handle a particular size, and they would have to be converted to handle other sizes. Large containers might prove impossible to fill with the available freight, but smaller ones would increase costs by requiring more lifts at the dock. Some lines had made large investments that could be rendered worthless if their containers were deemed “nonstandard.” Maritime executives were especially concerned that Marad would deny financial help and perhaps even government cargoes to “nonstandard” operators. Bull Line, which carried containers 15 feet long and 6 feet 10 inches high on its breakbulk ships to Puerto Rico, begged to be left alone, because it had no desire to interchange containers with other companies. Other lines urged the government to let the market sort things out as the container industry matured. When the Marad committee on dimensions reviewed the MH-5 subcommittee’s six proposed “standard” lengths in April 1959, it split. The deciding vote in favor of the MH-5 standards came from Marad itself, which was in a hurry to get standards, any standards, into place.9
The Marad committee also changed its mind about height. The previous November it had voted to make 8½ feet the maximum height for containers, but it ruled now for 8 feet. The change stemmed from concern that an 8½-foot-high container would violate highway height limits in some eastern states—a problem that was real for trucks hauling containers on standard trailers, but one that did not affect trucks pulling the specially designed chassis used by Pan-Atlantic and Matson. A lower height limit would benefit eastern truckers at the expense of ship lines: an 8-foot-high container held 6 percent less cargo than