Brief Timeline History: Sea freight Forwarding

The world was surrounded with a huge amount of bodies of water. Before the invention of technologies, people was not able to go through neighboring countries without being stopped by the unstoppable bodies of water that could swallow them up but for some reasons people was still able to advance on their natives ways and resulted to innovations that changes how living works.

Innovations that conquered the world little by little extending to the birth of business. As for business concerns, people had come grown to developing new technologies each day. They’ve developed such inventiveness that even transporting good through the sea is made possible. Created wonderful watercraft ready to carry large sum of loads. And given way to make freight forwarding a reliable way of delivering goods.

Sea transport, people’s way of carrying goods from one place to another by means of a vessel. Upon the idea of the sea transport, ship transport has been the familiar name, this transport could either be by a boat, ship, sailboat or barge to any distance may it be through oceans, lakes, canals, and along rivers. In simplest terms, it is any material that could be moved through the sea.

Shipping containers have been around for quite some time but when you go 60 years back, such machinery has not been possible and this luxury of having goods transported through the sea was just a dream of the visionary.

I think it’s about time that we delve into the goodness and greatness of the before and rise of shipping containers. On what was the means before such has been invented and how it finally came to be.

Before the rise of Shipping Containers

It was of known facts that people has been able to transport not just themselves but food and other goods as well just ask the Egyptians, Greeks, Roman and more recently the British. Though they may be able to ship goods themselves, it was clearly not under any standards resulting to slow and ineffective process.

Break bulk cargo has been the popular choice at that time where they store the goods in a warehouse and load them by hand onto the ship once it is ready for transport. And the ships could only carry 200,000 pieces of cargo.

It was until early 1900’s that the issue of lack of standardization has been greatly seen which slowed the flow of business for quite some time. This method has been so slow that transferring cargo from ships to train became a cry for help. For centuries, this method was the only way to transport goods. Imagine how tiring and slow it must have been.

The name Malcolm Mclean

Malcolm Mclean born on 14th November, 1913, an American businessman. On 1935, he co-founded Mclean Trucking Co. together with his sister Clara Mclean and his brother Jim Mclean. The trucking services included delivery of empty tobacco barrels.

In 1950, a successful Mclean with 1750 trucks and 37 transport terminal has experienced dilemmas in his business. Then came the fining of overloading cargoes. From then on, it hit him, an idea that spark into a vision that could change transporting goods for ages.

He idealized of constructing a standard sized trailer and then be loaded to boats exceeding the loading capacity of the trucks he once used. From such brilliant idea, he abandoned most of his trucks and focused on transporting goods through the sea.

From then on his trucks has been the way of transporting goods in short, intrastate deliveries. Hence being able to diminish levying fees which were introduced in the time.

Birth of Intermodalism

On the 26th of April 1956, Ideal X has sailed the seas from New Jersey to Houston. Due to having features of lockable containers and offers 25% discount on cargo transport that greatly affect how goods should be transported.

It was since 1960 when intermodal shipping container has been the favorable choice of sea freight. It was solely base in these two (2) reasons:

One was due to the vision of Mclean that helped eliminate dockside break bulk unloading bottlenecks.

Another was the introduction of standardization of container sizes giving way to mass production of container-handling equipment and a large sum of investment on ships.

From then more innovation has been made possible. The biggest container ship that ever sailed the seas was constructed for Maersk (Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller) which can hold up to 18,270 TEUs (9,135 boxes).

Advantages of Shipping Container

Containers have been so much help it could give you these advantages than inland transport: standardization, flexibility, costs, velocity, warehousing, security, and safety.

From such innovation, business expansion was made possible and reaching offshore deliveries is now easy breezy. Being able to widen your reach could mean to more potential customer could see the business leading to more opportunities and success.

Brief timeline history: Sea freight forwarding was brought to you by Metro Combined, the leading land, sea, and air freight forwarder here in the Philippines.