development of small-scale intermodal freight transportation in a ...

Europe.
…and from the supply part:
• The ports were situated in city centres and could not be expanded to meet the increased
demand on the current sites. The ports of the future also needed easy access to largescale
land infrastructure.
• The increased consciousness of capital costs also affected the shipping lines as the
ships became larger and more expensive.
• The manual stevedoring operations in ports had become so costly that mechanical
equipment was a prerequisite for expansion. Also transshipment to land modes had to
be made more efficient.
• Temporary engagements of many stevedores became troublesome with frequent strikes
etc. The ports also had to compete for workers – a scarcity in those days – by offering
full-time employment with job security.
• Transport technology had reached such a high level as to the facilitation of a technological
shift.
• Ships could simply not be built larger with preserved transshipment technology – the
loading-unloading operation in the port was a bottleneck and the portion of the ships’
stays in port would increase. Faster ships would also imply larger part of the time spent
in ports.
The maritime container was found to be the solution to meet the qualitative and quantitative
change in transport demand. It was implemented at a fast pace following the introduction in
the 1950’s by Sea-Land under Malcom MCLEAN’s management. With his first generation
of container ships – modified World War II tankers introduced in 1956 – only a restricted
number of ports were called and conventional cranes made the container handling an arduous
task. The second generation – introduced in 1957 – employed on-board cranes, adding
to cost and limiting stacking volume on deck, but facilitated calls at all ports with equipment
for moving the containers on the quay. First when many ports had invested in gantry
cranes in the late 1960’s the time was ready to introduce container ships as we know them
today.
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