YOUR heart jumps when you receive a message from customs that a friend from another country has sent you a valuable package. What can the package contain? Your expectations increase as you go down to the customs office to find out. So the package is there, okay, but what a disappointment! It was damaged and its contents damaged.
Or if you, the sender, find out that the package you sent was so lovingly destroyed before your friend received it? What a frustration! Or how do you feel as a seller when your products arrive too late to be valuable to the buyer? This is common with sea freight for packages.
Many years ago, boat trips must be slow and take several months. Although it took several days to load and unload a large number of items, it was small compared to the travel time. The work was done and the general goods remained relatively intact.
But as the transfer has increased over the years and the wages of dock workers have skyrocketed, the burden has become mechanized. The goal is to minimize time in port to reduce costs for merchants and shipowners. Of course, goods broke more easily when loading machines in fast motion, as the acceleration pressure increased. The expeditions consist of many small pieces ”were difficult to unite in the different stages of a long journey. Some have got lost. Customs controls at border crossings have exacerbated the problem. You need to find a solution to these problems.
The shipping container is growing
How do you get rid of all this manipulation of small parts? Well, as early as 1886, the idea of transporting "containers" appeared in a German magazine. But it was not until 1928 that significant progress was made. At that time, several European railway companies signed a contract for the transport and exchange of "containers" in Rome. They were large boxes filled with a series of small packages. The boxes were sealed and then transported to their destination without the usual customs controls at each border.
The positive experience of this groundbreaking system inspired the idea of transporting goods by sea in robust standard-size packaging containers. This idea was explored in France in 1953 and 1954. A conference organized by the UN in 1954 heard the results of that research. Using containers is said to reduce shipping costs by as much as 30%. To test the idea, fasteners were installed on the deck of some tankers. The experience was a success!
ISO (International Organization for Standardization) soon announced that a new transport unit, the container, had been born. It is designed as a robust box with a capacity of one cubic meter (1.3 cubic meters). The term "container" has been extended to include all these means of air, land or sea transport. The main common feature is that the goods are packed in a sturdy box that is transported to the closed destination.
Today, the standard container is a much larger box, about 6 or 12 meters long and 2.4 meters wide. It looks like a closed van, but without wheels. It is built to withstand the effects of full load of cranes, forklifts or other equipment.
Shipping companies and shipowners rent entire containers from traders or assemble several smaller transports to fill a container in the same port. These are transported to and from the piers with specially developed flatbed trucks and a low platform towed by trucks.
It is much more likely that the transmissions will remain intact as the individual parts do not need to be moved individually while driving. The risk of getting lost is also not that great as the whole container clearly goes to the destination port and it is not easy to lose a 20 or 40ft crate.
At the dock, this led to a revolution in loading speed. In a fully equipped container port, a container ship can be unloaded, reloaded and ready for the return trip in a day, while a traditional half-capacity freighter can take a week or more to sail. Thus, a single container ship can replace four or more conventional carriers.
The largest container ships can carry up to 2,500 20-foot containers at the same time. The most frequent container traffic in the world is between Europe and the United States, where many expensive container handling facilities are built. The longest containerized combined transport route leads from Europe via Siberia to Japan. Soviet ships carry containers from European ports to Leningrad, where they are loaded onto railroad cars for the journey through Siberia to the Pacific coast. Then they take him to Japan by boat. Container system adjustments are also widespread in different countries.
The "Ro-Ro" method
A slightly different development is the "ro-ro" delivery method (short for "roll on, roll off"). The goods are simply loaded onto the ship and removed again on wheels and do not require a crane. Specially developed “ro-ro” ships have a large fore or aft port through which vehicles can be driven. Hydraulic ramps or elevators bring them to the designated level where they are taken to their final location.
The interior of the ship looks like a parking lot at sea. About fifty of these combinations with truck trailers fit on such a boat or eighty trailers only forty meters long. As a result, the truck or "tractor" can contain the trailer container, or a tractor can pull a large number of these containers onto the ship, thereby sending them to serviceable tractors at the destination port.
In northern Europe and Scandinavia, where sea urchins differ from land, the transport of tow trucks on ships has been introduced for over fifteen years. The advantage, of course, is that the goods no longer have to be moved after being loaded into the trailer. The entire container moves directly to its destination on its wheels. In this way, the refrigerated vehicles transport the meat from Finland to Italy.
This type of transport has grown so rapidly recently that it has in fact become a new business. Many truck drivers constantly travel abroad and live in their trucks or boats. Many “RoRo” ships have comfortable cabins for truckers and there are many ways to pass the time eg. B. games, saunas, etc.
Flying container
Containerization has also become common in the aviation industry. Of course, the appearance, size and construction of containers differ from those used for sea and land transport. They should be curved to fit the walls of the aircraft so that all of the cargo space can be used optimally. Some cargo planes are designed so that the tail or nose folds into the hinges like a door. In this way, the printed containers can be easily loaded into the cargo hold.
How about applying the concept of container to passenger air traffic? The idea is not as strange as it might seem at first glance. This possibility has already been discussed by traffic planners and trade journals. The benefits are similar to the benefits of container shipping. These days expensive jets have to stay at the airport for a while while passengers are picked up, bags unloaded, compartment cleaned, supplies filled, and new passengers seated.
The designers hope to shorten this time by building planes so that the entire cockpit can be replaced. This would turn the union into a sort of gigantic "container". Passengers can take their seats and the entire sealed compartment can be securely attached to the body of the aircraft. This would mean that part of the aircraft is modified at the airport, which requires a slightly shorter processing time than the current method. Only time will tell whether such an unusual idea will last for a day.
Some problems
As with many advances in other areas, there was a price to pay. For example, men who work in the port see containerization as a threat to their jobs, as it reduces the need for labor and can therefore lead to unemployment. The container "revolution" therefore looks a little different from their point of view. However, dock workers are being trained to meet the new requirements and many new terminals are emerging to work with. It seems that shipping and container automation will stop here.
Even if your packaging is sometimes damaged or delayed, the container revolution has really contributed to the speed, efficiency and quality of handling. Now you can be sure that if your package is delivered in a container, it is more likely to arrive undamaged and on time.
Transportation have been made easy