The Box

The port was a vastly important source of jobs in New York City. In 1951, as operations were returning to normal after the war, more than 100,000 New Yorkers were employed in water transportation, trucking, and warehousing, not counting railroad employees and workers in the municipal ferry system. Another 14,000 New Yorkers worked in “transportation services, (Location 1431)

Note: Interesting parallel to what we will see likely with electric self driving trucks

Across the country, about 1 in 25 private-sector workers (excluding railroad employees) worked in merchant wholesaling in 1951, but the ratio in New York was 1 in 15. (Location 1437)

The first containership had yet to set sail, but the Port Authority was making clear that the future of container shipping would be in New Jersey, not in New York.19 (Location 1548)

used 1.4 million days of longshore labor. Hirings slid below a million in 1967–68, breached 350,000 in 1970–71, and dropped to 127,041 in 1975- 76—a 91 percent decline in longshore employment in twelve years. (Location 1725)

Delegates from Los Angeles and Long Beach, where practices such as needlessly unloading and reloading pallets were most entrenched, opposed any compromise. “Perhaps we have the most to lose of any local on the coast, (Location 1980)

Bizarrely, the parties now switched sides. The union demanded that the employers mechanize faster to eliminate these physical burdens. “We intend to push to make the addition of machines compulsory, (Location 2068)

Note: Probably what will happen with self driving trucks They will want more safety and easier conditions once they realize it will work

President Kennedy addressed the issue himself in 1962: “I regard it as the major domestic challenge, really, of the 60s, to maintain full employment, at a time when automation, of course, is replacing men.”44 (Location 2193)

On September 24, 1965, the ISO delegates approved the American design as the international standard for corner fittings. (Location 2489)

Of the 144 wharves that had operated in London at the start of 1967, 70 closed by the end of 1971, and almost all of the rest followed soon after. The number of dockworkers fell from 24,000 to 16,000 in less than five years. Factories and warehouses, with no further need to be near the Thames, began to flee, taking their import-and-export business elsewhere, and the waterfront communities tied to the port began to disintegrate. (Location 3532)

The container itself served as a mobile warehouse, so the traditional costs of storage in transit warehouses fell away. Cargo theft dropped sharply, and claims of damage to goods in transit fell by up to 95 percent; after insurers were persuaded that container shipping in fact had fewer property losses, premiums fell by up to 30 percent. Faster ships and reductions in the time needed to load and unload vessels at ports resulted in lower costs for inventory in shipment.21 (Location 4321)

Through the 1960s, study after study projected the growth of containerization by assuming that existing import and export trends would continue, with the cargo gradually being shifted into containers. The prospect that the container would permit a worldwide economic restructuring that would vastly increase the flow of trade was not taken seriously.18 (Location 4691)