The shipping industry of the 2020s is no less dangerous than it was many decades ago prior to the invention of the shipping container. Some might argue that the shipping container has made life aboard a massive freighter even more hazardous. 

Says the professionals at Chopin Law Firm, LLC., Louisiana maritime explosion law firm, offshore workers face unique and often dangerous risks and challenges every day and night including spontaneous explosions from gas and oil leaks. The work is physically demanding, but close contact with large equipment, heavy machinery, and shifting metal containers can lead to personal injury and even death. 

But aside from the physical dangers containers and container ships potentially pose, there is also a financial cost, or so the events of recent years have proven. According to a report by The American Prospect, despite any dangers metal containers might pose to the people who work within proximity of them on the open seas, and to the environment plus other seagoing craft when they become lost at sea, the rise of the shipping container is said to have revolutionized the world's economy. 

The many plentiful and cheap goods that can be found at the local Walmart or Target wouldn't be possible without the shipping container. The containerization of these everyday products is said to have drastically reduced the expense of international trade. It has also had a direct impact on the speed at which goods are shipped and delivered. 

Nearly 70 percent of the globe's consumer goods, or about $ 14 trillion worth of everything from tires, to bananas, to iPhones, are transported by maritime freight that carry shipping containers, one stacked atop the other. This means that just about everything that a person owns in the U.S. has been transported via shipping container. 

Before Shipping Containers

Says The American Prospect, before the standardizations of shipping containers over approximately 60 years ago, most of the goods transported from overseas markets required stowing aboard cargo ships inside individual units that were known as "break-bulk cargo." Crews of up to 25 longshoremen were hired to unload the cargo manually. The labor-intensive process could take days. 

Because of the time it would take to empty a freighter, ships would be docked idly in port sometimes longer than they would be at sea. Eventually this made ocean shipping unreliable, costly, and eventually impractical. Most consumer goods were instead manufactured locally then shipped by rail or by truck or both. Imports were considered expensive and limited in quantity. 

The Birth of the Container Ship

Not until 1956, a trucking company owner, Malcolm McLean, came up with the idea of converting two leftover World War II-era oil tankers, retrofitting them into the world's first true container ships. McLean designed a 33-foot container that could be easily lifted by cranes and set on the back of train cars and trucks. They were lockable to reduce theft. 

It was now possible to unload a cargo ship in a matter of hours rather than days. Under normal circumstances in the late 1950s, it cost about $6.00 per ton to unload a ship. But with the introduction of the container, the price dropped dramatically to $0.16 per ton. Thus was born the era of cheap goods manufactured overseas and the beginning of the end for U.S. manufacturing.  

Assistant professor of global studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Charmaine Chua, states that the shift from traditional freight to containerization was not something that happened overnight. Ports all around the globe were required to make massive infrastructure changes which "radically reconfigured the urban ecosystem." 

It was not just about the container, she goes on to explain, but the organization of the entire transportation system to standardize the way containers would travel from one end of the earth to the other. These changes required ecological evaluation to port cities due to the massive expansion of shipping spaces and trucking. The new containerization of goods is said to have had immense consequences for the people who resided in the port cities, along with the damage done to the ports themselves.   

Secret Unintended Costs of Shipping Containers 

According to Martin Danyluk, assistant professor at the School of Geography at the University of Nottingham, the invention of the shipping container allowed the U.S. to take full advantage of cheap overseas labor and to move a ton of manufacturing overseas, practically destroying entire communities by taking away their inhabitant's livelihoods. 

In turn, factories no longer were required to be located near markets and suppliers which meant mass migration from Rust Belt cities such as Flint, Detroit, and Buffalo. Containerization destroyed New York City's industrial base between the years 1967 and 1975, resulting in a city that became a ground zero for unemployment, excessive crime, and homelessness.  

The harsh impact of containerization on the environment cannot be overstated. Most cargo ships are said to utilize low-grade ship bunker diesel combustion engines for power. The largest tankers can carry upwards of 5 million gallons of fuel. The ships emit a toxic soup of substances ranging from sulfur oxides, nitrous oxides, and CO2. 

The pollution emitted from just one ship is said to put out the equivalent toxic emissions as 50 million cars, or so states the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The administration also states that cargo ship pollution has been directly linked to approximately 60,000 deaths per year and costs around $330 billion in heart and lung treatment costs, annually. These stats do not include the many crew deaths and serious injuries that result from containers that get loose from their stows during periods of rough seas.    

Containerization has been responsible for providing U.S. citizens with the cheap goods they can't seem to live without, like cell phones, iPads, laptops, and automobiles. But at what cost? What's required is a complete overhaul of the container shipping process to make it a healthier and safer means of transportation of everyday goods.