Malcom McLean

Malcolm Purcell McLean (November 14, 1913 – May 25, 2001) was an American businessman who invented the modern intermodal shipping container, which revolutionized transport and international trade in the second half of the twentieth century.

Containerization led to a significant reduction in the cost of freight transportation by eliminating the need for repeated handling of individual pieces of cargo, and also improved reliability, reduced cargo theft, and cut inventory costs by shortening transit time.

Containerization is a major driver of globalization.

McLean was born in Maxton, North Carolina in 1913.

His first name was originally spelled Malcolm, though he used Malcom later in life.

In 1926, regular connection of the luxury passenger train from London to Paris, Golden Arrow/Fleche d'Or, by Southern Railway and French Northern Railway began.

For transporting passengers' baggage, four containers were used.

These containers were loaded in London or Paris and carried to ports, Dover or Calais, on flat cars in the UK and “CIWL Pullman Golden Arrow Fourgon of CIWL” in France.

In 1935, when he finished high school at Winston-Salem, his family did not have enough money to send him to college, but there was enough for Malcolm to buy a used truck.

The same year, McLean, his sister, Clara, and his brother, Jim, founded McLean Trucking Co. Based in Red Springs, North Carolina, McLean Trucking started hauling empty tobacco barrels, with Malcolm as one of the drivers.

The idea of transporting trucks on ships was put into practice before World War II.

In the early 1950s, McLean decided to use the containers commercially.

By 1952, he was developing plans to carry his company's trucks on ships along the U.S. Atlantic coast, from North Carolina to New York.

It soon became apparent that "trailerships", as they were called, would be inefficient because of the large waste in potential cargo space on board the vessel, known as broken stowage.

The original concept was modified into loading just the containers, not the chassis, onto the ships, hence the designation container ship or "box" ship.

At the time, U.S. regulations would not allow a trucking company to own a shipping line.

McLean secured a bank loan for $22 million and, in January 1956, bought two World War II T-2 tankers, which he converted to carry containers on and under deck.

McLean oversaw the construction of wooden shelter decks, known as Mechano decking.

This was a common practice in World War II for the carriage of oversized cargo, such as aircraft.

It took several months to refit the ships, construct containers to carry on and below the vessels' decks and design trailer chassis to allow removable containers.

On April 26, 1956, with 100 invited dignitaries on hand, one of the converted tankers, the SS Ideal-X (informally dubbed the "SS Maxton" after McLean's hometown in North Carolina), was loaded and sailed from the Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal, New Jersey, for the Port of Houston, Texas, carrying 58 35 ft Trailer Vans, later called containers, along with a regular load of liquid tank cargo.

As the Ideal-X left the Port of Newark, Freddy Fields, a top official of the International Longshoremen's Association, was asked what he thought of the newly fitted container ship.

Fields replied, "I'd like to sink that son of a bitch."

McLean flew to Houston to be on hand when the ship safely docked.

In 1956, most cargoes were loaded and unloaded by hand by longshore workers.

Hand-loading a ship cost $5.86 a ton at that time.

Using containers, it cost only 16 cents a ton to load a ship, 36-fold savings.

Containerization also greatly reduced the time to load and unload ships.

McLean knew "A ship earns money only when she's at sea", and based his business on that efficiency.

In April 1957, the first container ship, the Gateway City, began regular service between New York, Florida, and Texas.

During the summer of 1958 McLean Industries, still using the name Pan-Atlantic Steamship Corporation, inaugurated container service between the U.S. mainland and San Juan, Puerto Rico with the vessel Fairland.

The name was officially changed from Pan-Atlantic Steamship Corporation to Sea-Land Service, Inc. in April 1960.

The development of the container market was slow until the late 1960s.

Many ports did not have the cranes to lift containers on and off ships, and change was slow in an industry steeped in tradition.

Moreover, unions resisted an idea that threatened their livelihood.

McLean's operation was profitable by 1961 and he kept adding routes and buying bigger ships.

In August 1963, McLean opened a new 101 acre port facility in Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal to handle even more container traffic.

In April 1966, Sea-Land commenced service between New York and Rotterdam, Netherlands; Bremen, Germany; and Grangemouth, Scotland.

In 1967, Sea-Land was invited by the U.S. government to start a container service to South Vietnam.

The service to Vietnam produced 40% of the company's revenue in 1968/69.