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The Box

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Summary – “The Box”, by Marc Levinson. Princeton 2006
Marc Levinson brings together in his book “The Box”, How The Shipping Container Made The World Smaller And the World Economy Bigger, a history in unitised freight handling in its birthplace, and shares with us an education in obsession, innovation, and invention. He describes through his main character, Malcom McLean, how to do business by integrating shipper, transporter, and customer in controlled logistics/ in a smooth supply chain. Further, the reader is given a lesson in investor relations whether they be public or private sector.
Despite regulated land transport, and unregulated freight handling on the docks, the result is the same: inertia in the evolution of both road and rail, …show more content…

“To run a high frequency service between major ports on a regular schedule” (pp.222) becomes the mantra for operating containerised sea-freight. Although many countries Government subsidise the investment of shipbuilding, or lend funds at very low rates of interest, and extend payment terms, ship owners need to supply themselves with containers, and chassis, to provide an integrated service to their customers. The sudden explosion of containers, containerships, enormous slot capacity between 1970-73 sees the coming of age of this new industry. More than ever, containers oblige their operators to constantly monitor costs, and the minimum requirement is to cover operating costs to keep the ships sailing.
Operating a profitable freight handling business requires “ship lines ... to build bigger ships and faster cranes to reduce the cost of handling each container ... [to] have the best chance of survival” (pp227). Before the end of the 1970´s, however, the reality of operating containers is that it is “a capital intensive, cyclical transportation” (pp.230) business. The bitter pill is that “they would always be hostage to external forces, their prices and profit margins depending mainly on economic growth and on the competitors´ decisions to build new ships”(pp.230). “The revolutionary impact of containerisation, the biggest advance in freight movement for generations, has largely worked itself out” (pp.230 – The Financial Times

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