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The name Malcolm McLean may not mean much to most Americans, but nearly every package delivered to a home or store today traces back in some way to his idea.
When McLean died in 2002, Forbes Magazine described him as “one of the few men who changed the world.”
“McLean was a pioneer. He put the first container on the ship,” said maritime historian and American Journal of Transportation editor Stas Margaronis. “He saw the idea.”
In 1935, McLean owned a North Carolina trucking company, but he grew frustrated with the time it took to load and unload freight moving between trucks, warehouses and ships.
At the time, cargo handling was cumbersome and inefficient.
“There were boxes that would come on. You would unload them, take them to a warehouse, ship them all together and then somehow put the pallets onto a truck,” Margaronis said.
McLean’s solution was to create a standardized metal cargo container that could be stacked aboard ships and transferred directly between ships, trucks and trains.
The containers, known today as TEUs, or twenty-foot equivalent units, revolutionized global trade.
The containers could be secured to truck chassis, allowing freight to move quickly between ports, warehouses and stores. At some point in the supply chain, more than 70% of freight in the U.S. travels by truck.
At ports, containers could be unloaded directly from ships onto waiting truck chassis or rail cars, dramatically speeding up shipping operations.
But Margaronis said McLean’s concept did not fully take off until the 1960s, when rising imports and the Vietnam War accelerated demand for faster cargo movement.
“It really didn’t take off until the war in Vietnam during the ’60s, when we really needed to expedite war materials and supplies to support the Vietnam War,” Margaronis said.
There was also resistance from powerful dockworker unions, especially at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
“The International Longshore and Warehouse Union and the Pacific Maritime Association agreed in 1960 in the Mechanization and Modernization Agreement to allow for labor-saving devices and provide severance pay for workers who wanted to retire,” Margaronis said. “So there was an agreement to reduce the workforce and increase the use of labor-saving devices.”
That agreement helped clear the way for widespread container shipping operations at American ports.
Today, U.S. ports handle an estimated 40 million shipping containers annually, while globally, more than 190 million containers move through ports each year.
From a small trucking company founded during the Great Depression, McLean went on to build Sea-Land Industries, one of the world’s largest shipping companies. The company later became part of Danish shipping giant Maersk.
By the 1980s, McLean had become a multimillionaire. He also remains the only person credited with founding three companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange and two on the Nasdaq.
Today, massive container ships operated by Maersk and other carriers can transport more than 20,000 containers on a single voyage.
“McLean saw the idea, but it really took the Vietnam War and the ILWU acceptance of labor-saving equipment to move that process forward,” Margaronis said.
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