Another important metric for ships is deadweight tonnes (DWT): how much weight a ship can carry including cargo, fuel, passengers and other equipment.ĭid you know that 40-foot containers have recently been co-opted as tiny homes because of rising house prices around the globe? Types Of Containers and cargo As well as the 20 ft containers, the freight industry uses 40 ft containers, this means ship capacity can also be given in forty-foot equivalent units (FEU) i.e., one FEU counts as two TEU. The full dimensions of a standard container is 20 x 8 x 8 ft. The capacity of a container ship is measured in TEU (twenty-foot equivalent units) referring to the length of a 20 foot (approximately 6.1m) long container. The early container ships were around 38 ft long with a capacity of 500 – 800 TEU (more on that later), today the smallest containers in use measure 45 ft in length. Once containers became the hottest thing in global trade, the ships that carry them started getting bigger. Now a time when commodities were transported in sacks seems like a fever dream to most. McLean’s patented design became the International Shipping Organisation (ISO) standard shortly after its advent. The big steel box was introduced to the freight industry in 1956 by American trucking business owner Malcolm McLean. The History of Container ShippingĬontainers are one of those simple inventions that drastically changed how the world works. In the last decade the number of container ships in the global merchant fleet averaged around 6000 per year. When it comes to agricultural products, it is usually things that are fit for human consumption or have already been through some sort of processing that are loaded into containers, like refined sugar. Container vessels typically operate on a regularly scheduled set route, this type of shipping service is known as liner shipping.Ĭontainer ships dominate maritime shipping because most goods need to be shipped in intermodal containers, especially consumer or ‘final’ goods. Sometimes you will hear them called ‘box ships’ because they carry boxes of cargo. What are Container Ships?Ĭontainer ships are maritime vessels that carry cargo containers, also known as intermodal containers. Before we explain the circumstances that caused the cost of containerised freight to reach an all-time high in September 2021, let us dive into the fundamentals of containerisation first. For the last three years the cost of container freight has garnered much attention and frustrated many in the supply chain industry. The world’s commodities are largely transported by sea, specifically on container ships.
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