A standard ISO 20 foot freight container has inside dimensions of 19’5” (length) by 7’8” (wide) by 7’9.5” (high). The container itself weighs 4189 pounds, and has a dry capacity of 48,721 pounds, and a volume of 1,165 cubic feet. These are immutable facts, set by the International Organization for Standardization. You can purchase a handbook from the ISO that tells you everything you want to know about shipping containers.
To send a 20 foot container full of food from the U.S. east coast to the port of Rotterdam costs about $1700 US.
The “founding father of the freight container” was Malcolm McLean, who died in 2001. In a tribute to McLean, United States Commissioner of Customs, Robert C. Bonner related the history:
Malcolm McLean invented the shipping container in the 1930s in New Jersey, while sitting at a dock waiting all day for cargo he had carried there in his truck to be reloaded onto a ship. He figured out a better way to pack goods and transport them by sea - which was to secure them in large steel boxes that could be easily loaded onto ships. And in so doing he came up with an idea that changed the face of global trade.
SeaLand, the company that McLean founded, is now Maersk-Sealand, having merged with the Maersk Line in 1999. It’s difficult to drive down any highway, or through any port, anywhere, without seeing a container with Maersk painted on the side.
There was a lot of post-9-11 talk about shipping containers being the weakest link in the controls the U.S. would like to have on immigration and importation. News stories made it sound like there's a lot of research going on into technologies with which to retrofit them to make them tamper resistant and/or tamper evident, as well as into technologies to detect unwanted cargo (people, bombs) without having to empty and search them physically (effectively impossible, because there are too many). As the dimensions you cite handily show, Peter, a container indeed conceals a large volume of stuff. It's a long way from the tip of a sniffer-dog's nose to the center of a container, and X-rays don't penetrate steel. So if it's not neutrons they've started using on randomly selected containers, I think they're using gamma rays to see through them (great, so now instead of 2-inch tropical bugs that come strolling out of containers it will be 20ft mutated bugs that come out). But even using a form of illumination that can penetrate the box, because of it's capacity, often you will be seeing so many items superimposed in cross-section that the picture can be impossible to interpret. So the pundits say it may always be easy to hide things in them.
POSTED JUN 25, 2003 AT 15:19 ADT BY OLIVER B.I just remembered something else I heard about containers: A woman I once dated in the international port city of Oakland, Calif, was a "container broker." She told me that some of her customers were private citizens who would buy containers to live or work in. Cubic centimeter per cubic centimeter, they represent very cheap architecture, apparently. I don't know if the customers would retrofit them with windows or anything. I imagine they park them in a lot.
POSTED JUN 25, 2003 AT 15:31 ADT BY OLIVER B.
In this month's dwell magazine there's an interesting article about a prefab house design competition. One of the entries used shipping containers as building blocks, and spaced them apart to make spaces for windows and doors. I have a friend who uses a shipping container as a storage shed for his remotely-located blueberry growing operation.
POSTED JUN 25, 2003 AT 15:35 ADT BY PETER RUKAVINAOn living in a shipping container:
http://www.escapeartist.com/OREQ4/Nomadic_Housing2000.html
POSTED JUN 25, 2003 AT 15:37 ADT BY OLIVER B.I had thought this living-in-container-business was an obscure fact, but with the help of Google it almost ends up looking like a trend.
POSTED JUN 25, 2003 AT 15:50 ADT BY OLIVER B.http://www.bayarea.com/mld/cctimes/4834451.htm
is another free article online which seems to be broader and more about the container avante guard. I seem unable to contain myself.
POSTED JUN 25, 2003 AT 16:02 ADT BY OLIVER B.
Dang you oliver for not making your links clickable...Seems all but impossible to copy\paste from the comments...
POSTED JUN 25, 2003 AT 16:06 ADT BY Mark (mmcquaid@onlinesupport.com)
I would love to know how to make my links clickable. Everybody seems to know how to format their comments on Peter's site but me. Peter, could you be persuaded to make a instruction page or a link out to some other person's instructions, in case the rules are common?
POSTED JUN 25, 2003 AT 16:15 ADT BY OLIVER B.Oliver i think standard html should do it. "Name Link Here" ..Minus the whole "" deals...Tis just that easy...Maybe peter could be persuaded into making the txt on the site easier to copy as well ;-)..
POSTED JUN 25, 2003 AT 18:46 ADT BY Mark (mmcquaid@onlinesupport.com)
hmm..poo...the " " around the actual code didnt quite seem to work....lets try this (a href="insert link here")Name Link Here(/a) ..Replacing the ( ) with < >
POSTED JUN 25, 2003 AT 18:48 ADT BY Mark (mmcquaid@onlinesupport.com)
Um, so are we talking like this...?
POSTED JUN 25, 2003 AT 19:09 ADT BY OLIVER B.It works! Those container dwelling links are this avant guarde one,, this first one I cited and finally here's another one. Best enjoyed with prickly pear puree.
POSTED JUN 25, 2003 AT 19:14 ADT BY OLIVER B.If you want to get a sense of the size of a 20' shipping container, and you're in Charlottetown this weekend, there are several of them parked out in the back half of Confederation Landing Park.
POSTED JUN 26, 2003 AT 21:58 ADT BY PETER RUKAVINA
Dear Sir....
We would like to introduce our company NUSANTARA ABADI PESONA, majoring in SLUDGE OIL taking over, joint with PELINDO
If you ships longside Port of Tanjung Priok Jakarta , joint with us for the pumping SLUDGE OIL.
Thus, we do hope to make a cooperation with you.
Please contact with me by email : nusantara_nap@yahoo.com
* May be you could give me email address where i can advertise please.
Brgds
RICHARD
POSTED OCT 3, 2003 AT 00:37 ADT BY RICHARD (nusantara_nap@yahoo.com)
for peter and oliver
POSTED NOV 11, 2003 AT 00:58 AST BY Graeme Addis (graeme@addis.co.nz)
If you're thinking of designing other uses for shipping containers all the internal and external dimensions for are listed on the Portastore Shipping Container Hire and Storage website.
POSTED APR 20, 2008 AT 22:15 ADT BY Paul
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