The British develop the Intermodel Container between the world wars.

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All the discussion seems to indicate that if there was a strong government willing to standardize and is starting from a blank slate (no organized labor, no complex legacy infrastructure, no political interference), containerization might have been undertaken earlier.

You mean like in 1795 where a coal mine was shipping coal around in carts that could be put on boats? Or how in 1830s they were using basic wooden boxes that could be loaded 4/cart? 1840s they were made of iron?

Containerization has been around, but not united until the past several decades.


As to the dockworkers lifting goods, the other detail is that containers kept dockworkers from seeing what was inside, so they didn't know if the container was worth breaking into. Regular cargo could be seen, so any pilferage would be focused on the more valuable stuff.

That could have been the method used to introduce containerization early, where alcohol shippers would use the container to fully secure their cargo, instead of taking the losses from break bulk. They would set up two ports, and just ship the alcohol between those two ports. At the end of the year they would judge based on losses if containers were more efficient. Have another shipper ask them about shipping costs, and if the container is cheaper they will use those ports too.

(As a comparison, in 1956 it cost $5.86 US to load and unload a ton of cargo from a ship. Using a container the price dropped to $.16 per ton. There is a lot of money to be made by the alcohol shippers if they offer containerized shipping to others.)
 
Yes. It was seen as a perk of the job.

I'd hate to sound like the typical obtrusive asshole from every 80's movie, but taking stuff that doesn't belong to you isn't really that sympathetic. That is quite literally the definition of 'stealing'.
 
I hate to be unsympathetic; but this discussion has proceeded as if the stevedore companies didn't exist as oligopolies; as if docks weren't one of the most combative fields of class war for very good work health and safety, wage, and labour market reasons; and as if mechanisation is politically neutral rather than a method of breaking up workers powers to maintain rates and safe working.

Even shifting the mentality of the stevedore companies from the abuse of labour to the abuse of labour via mechanisation would be a change beyond expected. Often, the first recourse when the "bull pen" system of union busting day hires fails to break dockworkers, is the State.

To get early containerisation through you need to break one or the other side of the docks. And even if you break the workers, why are the bosses going to containerise at a vast capital input cost, when they've just solved their profitability problem in human blood and sweat?

yours,
Sam R.
 
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To get early containerisation through you need to break one or the other side of the docks. And even if you break the workers, why are the bosses going to containerise at a vast capital input cost, when they've just solved their profitability problem in human blood and sweat?

hence why i mentioned the stevedores/ dockworkers before.

there is actually a third way, when someone who just looks at that mess, and decides to bypass it, but it would mean this company needs to own their own dock space. Which would be like how it got started OTL.
so what you need is an early transport tycoon that had enough of it, and decides to bypass the stevedores altogether. And legally it would not be strikebreaking, or bypassing stevedore unions, since crane handlers are probably in a different union.
 
hence why i mentioned the stevedores/ dockworkers before.

there is actually a third way, when someone who just looks at that mess, and decides to bypass it, but it would mean this company needs to own their own dock space. Which would be like how it got started OTL.
so what you need is an early transport tycoon that had enough of it, and decides to bypass the stevedores altogether. And legally it would not be strikebreaking, or bypassing stevedore unions, since crane handlers are probably in a different union.

Apart from areas with compulsory arbitration and universal coverage…

A new market entrant into a declining profitability market (international shipping and stevedoring) is even less likely (imho) than the kind of peacetime government that would force large scale mechanisation. And using the Great Strike to get a technocratic labour or anti-labour dictatorship is an allohistorical sledge to crush a nut.

yours,
Sam R.
 
What if Soviet Russia forced containers on the proletariat after one too many dock strikes. Can't have the workers believing that they have a say in how a dock is managed! Harrumpf!
 
Do you mean that dockworkers (not all, I imagine, but some) had a habit of lifting goods that happened to 'fall off' and 'become damaged'? In that case, I would've loved to have seen their defence.
Their defence was, basically, "Right lads, everybody out!".

The trick to getting intermodal containerisation going isn't, I think, getting it accepted in the docks, but making it virtually universal in the hinterland, so that the advantages for marine transport become unassailable. The railways were already moving that way, especially as they generally had a significant road trasport arm up to WW2. Once it becomes normal for inland transport to become done by container, some customers - especially those dealing in valuable goods - will probably insist that the container carrying their goods is transported on board ship as a single load. It'll be deck cargo, of course, and a crane will be needed, but it's no difficulty for a shipping company to take a few.

The economic advantages will take it from there, complete with shipping companies and dockworkers digging in their heels to resist the change in working practices. In OTL, the shipping lines accepted it, eventually, whilst entirely new ports were established to handle containers in Britain - putting the dockworkers at the traditional breakbulk ports out of work almost to a man. Another own goal for the British trade unions.

Going the Soviet route is another option - I can easily see them going for the standardisation, efficiency of operation, and reduced pilferage (by enemies of the proletariat, of course!) containerisation brings. With their mix of rail and water transport, the advantages are obvious, and it's a big enough internal market that whether it's an accepted norm for international trade doesn't really matter.
 
Only Military

Mayby instead of changing the whole Pre-War transport sector, keep the use of Containers restricted to the Military.
A Staff study of the logistics in the great war and a sollution offered (less personel / faster loading&unloading etc.. There was always some hotspots in Empire that required miltary intervention. Push as a way to get more teeth than tail in to field. Thus making it possible to do the same tasks with less personel and saving money for other things.
 
The trick to getting intermodal containerisation going isn't, I think, getting it accepted in the docks, but making it virtually universal in the hinterland, so that the advantages for marine transport become unassailable. The railways were already moving that way, especially as they generally had a significant road trasport arm up to WW2. Once it becomes normal for inland transport to become done by container, some customers - especially those dealing in valuable goods - will probably insist that the container carrying their goods is transported on board ship as a single load. It'll be deck cargo, of course, and a crane will be needed, but it's no difficulty for a shipping company to take a few.
Change the ICC ruling to allow pricing per container and you would probably shave 20 years off the OTL dates, in part by cutting back on the massive amount of non-container investment and legacy stuff. If all the rail on the eastern seaboard is container-capable, some of them will go on a ship sooner or later. If usage is widespread, the sizes and fixings will be standardised. Standardization will make the ships more efficient - and so on.
 
Mayby instead of changing the whole Pre-War transport sector, keep the use of Containers restricted to the Military.
A Staff study of the logistics in the great war and a sollution offered (less personel / faster loading&unloading etc.. There was always some hotspots in Empire that required miltary intervention. Push as a way to get more teeth than tail in to field. Thus making it possible to do the same tasks with less personel and saving money for other things.

I once heard that the Royal Artillery were the best-prepared for war than the other service branches of the British Army because they didn't really have much to do after World War I (not a lot of peacetime duties require arty support), compared to the others that were either too busy or too expensive to reorganize and swallow the lessons learned in the Great War. Containers are something I could possibly see coming from the Royal Engineers, though of course extending the process all the way to the factory is the ideal.

Also, bump.
 
What do you do with the glut of cheap German and US (especially) merchant ships that were dumped on the shipping market after WWI? It tood decades for them to filter through the system limiting the amount of innovation that was ecconomically practical.
 
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