Customer Reviews

Box Boats: How Container Ships Changed the World

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Like a lot of other significant advances in technology modern dry cargo carriage was really put together by one man, Malcom McLean. Fifty years ago McLean, the president of McLean Trucking came up with the idea of taking trailers directly on board ships for transport to a port near their final destination. To minimize the space requirements, he had a special trailer developed that would carry a standardized trailer body. The idea of the container was born.

The first shipment in the spring of 1956 used a converted ship that could carry fifty eight trailer bodies. The idea was successful beyond the wildest dreams. The concept of a trailer body being loaded anywhere in the world, trucked to a port, transported by ship to another port, and then trucked to its final destination has literally changed the way business is done. It is largely responsible for the way today's world of manufacture being anywhere in the world and still supplying the world's markets.

This book is about half a biography of McLean, and his life. But his life largely paralleled that of the container business. The other half tells the story of the rest of the industry.

Malcom Mclean is little known outside the shipping industry. But his creation of the way the world now ships products deserves to be better known. He is one of the titans of industry.

BOX BOATS: HOW CONTAINER SHIPS CHANGED THE WORLD tells how the first container ship in 1956 changed the entire shipping industry, introducing a concept and transportation idea which would revolutionize the costs of shipping goods. From the Pan-Atlantic's owner who first thought about loading his trucks on board to his evolving line which grew into a giant container service, Cudahy charts not just the evolution of one company, but its impact on and changes within the world shipping and steamship industries as a whole. A fascinating, detailed account.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

As a merchant mariner and retired USN Operations Specialist I have spent nearly thirty years sailing the world's oceans and observing the ubiquitous container ships on every sea lane and in every port. This book has given me a new appreciation for these giant cargo vessels and their vital role in global commerce. Not a scholarly treatise but a readable, comprehensive look at the history of importance of container shipping. Highly recommended!

I recommend this book to anyone interested in the history of ships or the history of transportation and logistics. I think that audience will find this book very interesting. The subtitle of the book is a bit misleading in that the author does not examine in any depth how containerization helped shape the global economy of today. Read Marc Levinson's "The Box", which gives a little bit better analysis of how containers changed the transportation industry and the global economy. Regardless, it wasn't container ships that wrought a transportation revolution, it was the containers themselves. The main title of the book though is "Box Boats" and in that regard, Cudahy has written a fine history of container ships, the container ship industry and how the design of cargo ships has changed to meet the demands of the container revolution. I found the story of the Sea-Land SL-7s particularly interesting, I was not aware of this history of the Navy's Fast Sealift Ships.

The entire first half of the book focuses on the Malcolm McLean and the corporation he founded, Sea-Land. I don't see how that can be avoided in a book about containers or container ships. McLean was the visionary that started container revolution in 1956 and Sea-Land dominated the container shipping business through the 1960's and 1970's, although several other giant shipping lines eventually caught up and even surpassed them. Cudahy goes on in the second half of the book tracing how the international shipping industry transformed itself through the 80's and 90's and then what its future holds. All in all a quick read, only 256 pages, with plenty of interesting footnotes to supplement the story.

It's interesting to note how a US firm, Sea-Land, essentially invented containerization as we know it today, but 50 years later all the leading shipping lines are non-US firms, Maersk, MSC, Evergreen Marine, etc. Sea-Land was absorbed by Maersk and is now gone as its own firm. Only APL is in the top ten today and they are a subsidiary of Neptune Orient Lines, a Singapore based corporation. From a national defense point of view it makes one wonder if the US would be able to call on sufficient shipping resources in a future global crisis.

Goes into the dynamics of the industry, Focusing on these often ignored beautiful Vessels, Containerships and Containershipping. How it has in fact changed the world,sometimes depending on who you ask for the worst or better. Mostly for the better as far as getting something faster and across the world, But at the same time there is no American Containershipping line left(Only domestic) Sea-Land Was Gobbled Up By Maersk. APL is owned by NOL. This book goes into detail and is a good read.

The very comprehensive story of container ships and the advent of ocean containers. This should be taught in all American history classes in high schools. A follow-on book needs to be written about intermodalism---the story of how some American Steamship companies invented the stack train concept and ultimately financially saved the hide-bound American railroads in the 1980's.

I found the book dreadfully dull. Its in-depth discussion of container ships has little whatsoever to do with an analytical overview of their impact upon the global economy.

Certainly this is suitable for box-boat enthusiasts, but will hold little interest for political scientists or economists. Perhaps a better subtitle would have been "the history of container ships."