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Caterpillar Marine - Marine Engines Caterpillar

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The container turns fifty, and …<br />

its success story is far from over<br />

People have never set so much<br />

store by a thing made to store<br />

things,“ quipped a German<br />

business magazine with reference<br />

to the container in the mid-1960s.<br />

The big standardised boxes from<br />

the USA came over the Atlantic in<br />

1966. Before this, however, they<br />

had already undergone refinement<br />

for over ten years in inner-American<br />

transport, initiated by Malcolm<br />

McLean (1913-2001), a man who<br />

became a legend in his own lifetime.<br />

This development was certainly<br />

also followed from the other<br />

side of the Atlantic. Yet the Europeans<br />

became very agitated when it<br />

became clear that they would also<br />

be confronted by these boxes. They<br />

were certainly not happy about this<br />

prospect and in fact deeply sceptical,<br />

although they gladly welcomed<br />

so many other things “from<br />

Methods had to change in the fast-growing sea<br />

transport sector.<br />

In the spotlight<br />

America”. Yet everyone was aware<br />

that something was „in the air“,<br />

that with the advent of the boxes<br />

something unusual was bound to<br />

occur, although no one knew what<br />

might happen, what kind of development<br />

could be expected and<br />

where it would all end. It was as on<br />

the eve of a revolution, and, as we<br />

all know, it became one.<br />

The container very rapidly transformed<br />

not only the entire transport<br />

world with all its hitherto<br />

separate areas but also the whole<br />

global economy. Without the container,<br />

the much praised – or also<br />

detested – process of globalisation<br />

as we have experienced in the past<br />

In May 1966, the Sea-Land containership<br />

„Fairland“ unloaded the first<br />

containers carried overseas in Rotterdam<br />

and Bremerhaven.<br />

23

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