THE DIFFERENCE THAT CONTAINERIZATION MAKES.

THE DIFFERENCE THAT CONTAINERIZATION MAKES. I posted here about the little-noticed economic revolution resulting from containerization. It is probably little noticed because the technology is so simple. A child can understand that a big box holds more than a small box and that it is cheaper and takes less time to handle a few big boxes rather than a lot of small items. Maja Jasanoff had a review in the New York Review of Books (April 3) of a book about the shipping industry: NINETY PERCENT OF EVERYTHING by Rose George. Professor Jasanoff points out that a medium-sized container ship carries about 13,500 containers (boxes that are 20 feet long). In the days before containers, a typical ship might carry an inventory of hundreds of thousands of items, which had to be loaded and kept track of. Before container ships, port calls for loading and unloading might take, as Professor Jasanoff says, “days, if not weeks”. A container ship can load in 24 hours or less.