Malcom P. McLean
Malcom McLean
Born November 14, 1913 - Died May 25, 2001
Containerized Shipping
Patent #: 2,853,968 Inducted 2008
Malcom McLean invented containerized shipping, which transformed the shipping industry, in the 1950s. By the end of the twentieth century, container ships transported nearly 90 percent of the world's trade cargo.
Invention Impact
McLean designed containers that could be separated from the truck bed and wheels, were made of heavy steel to protect their contents, and could be neatly stacked. He acquired a fleet of old tankers and converted them to container ships. McLean's container system dramatically reduced time and labor costs, as well as pilfering and damage to cargo - which had the added benefit of lowering insurance rates.
McLean's improvements reduced the cost of shipping 25 percent. His new company, SeaLand Industries, became the largest cargo-shipping business in the world.
Inventor Bio
The son of a farmer, McLean was born near Maxton, North Carolina. His education ended with high school. During the Great Depression, McLean bought a used truck and began hauling products for nearby farmers. Like other truckers, he chafed at the time lost as crates were loaded and unloaded between trucks and the holds of ships. In 1955, after building his trucking business into the fifth-largest fleet in the U.S., he sold it in order to capitalize on a revolutionary idea.
Born November 14, 1913 - Died May 25, 2001
Containerized Shipping
Patent #: 2,853,968 Inducted 2008
Malcom McLean invented containerized shipping, which transformed the shipping industry, in the 1950s. By the end of the twentieth century, container ships transported nearly 90 percent of the world's trade cargo.
Invention Impact
McLean designed containers that could be separated from the truck bed and wheels, were made of heavy steel to protect their contents, and could be neatly stacked. He acquired a fleet of old tankers and converted them to container ships. McLean's container system dramatically reduced time and labor costs, as well as pilfering and damage to cargo - which had the added benefit of lowering insurance rates.
McLean's improvements reduced the cost of shipping 25 percent. His new company, SeaLand Industries, became the largest cargo-shipping business in the world.
Inventor Bio
The son of a farmer, McLean was born near Maxton, North Carolina. His education ended with high school. During the Great Depression, McLean bought a used truck and began hauling products for nearby farmers. Like other truckers, he chafed at the time lost as crates were loaded and unloaded between trucks and the holds of ships. In 1955, after building his trucking business into the fifth-largest fleet in the U.S., he sold it in order to capitalize on a revolutionary idea.
Malcolm P. McLean
1913 - 2001
Inventor of the Box That Changed the World
by Dr. Tom Hanchett*
Reprinted with permission from the Tar Heel Junior Historian. Fall 2006.
NC Museum of History
The idea to move goods in big metal boxes was a simple idea, but a powerful one. Make each box as large as a truck-trailer. Put the box on truck wheels and pull it over the highway. Put it on train wheels and pull it over the railroad. Build a huge crane to stack it onboard a boat. Goods would move quickly and surely, because they got packed in the box at the start of the trip and unpacked at the end. In between, no one would touch them.
Malcom P. McLean, of North Carolina, turned that simple idea into an important reality half a century ago. His invention—containerized shipping—changed the world. McLean was born in 1914 in Robeson County. From humble roots, he built a major business empire.
Young Malcom McLean began driving a truck at age seventeen during the hard times of the Great Depression. By the 1950s, he owned one of America’s biggest transportation companies, based in Winston-Salem. On highways throughout the eastern United States, everyone knew the tractor-trailer rigs with the big, red McLean Trucking Company diamond.
McLean had gotten the shipping container idea back in 1937, when he was still driving his own truck. He had sat for a whole day at a New Jersey port waiting for workers to unload his truck and put the goods on a ship. Why not make a truck-trailer that could be lifted onto a ship or onto railroad wheels—without anyone touching the contents?
At age forty-two, wealthy from his trucking business, McLean could at last pursue his dream. He bought an old oil tanker, a large ship, the Ideal-X. His workers modified fifty-eight truck-trailers, making each trailer-box separate from its chassis and wheels. On April 26, 1956, at the port of Newark, New Jersey, McLean watched proudly as a giant crane swung the trailer-boxes up onto the Ideal-X. The ship steamed off toward Houston, Texas. The era of container shipping had begun.
By the mid-1960s, McLean’s SeaLand company had built container-handling facilities in many U.S. pSS Ideal-X. Photo courtesy of Maersk/SeaLand.orts. Going overseas was the next logical step, but the expense was too great for SeaLand.
The Vietnam War was raging, and McLean saw a way he could help the government and help his company. He convinced officials at the Pentagon to build a container-handling facility near Saigon, Vietnam. Just two of McLean’s highly efficient container ships could carry as much military freight as four regular boats. With the Pentagon paying SeaLand ships to travel to Asia, it was easy to stop off in Japan and bring inexpensive manufactured goods back to the United States.
That marked a turning point in the rise of today’s globalized economy. Suddenly, it became very easy for American stores to buy from factories where labor was cheap— anyplace in the world.
Since the 1960s, the globalized economy has brought great changes across North Carolina. On one hand, for example, textile factories throughout the state have closed, unable to match the prices of imports. On the other hand, Wilmington has become a thriving port for container ships. SeaLand is now part of Danish-owned Maersk corporation, which has a huge office building in Charlotte. Charlotte also is the headquarters for a SeaLand spin-off called Horizon Lines, one of America’s largest shipowners.
McLean died in 2001.
*At the time of this article’s publication, Dr. Tom Hanchett was staff historian at the Levine Museum of the New South in Charlotte.
References and additional resources:
Greh, Thomas. The Container Story. Trifilm GmbH, 2006.
NC LIVE resources
Poston, Toby. "Thinking Inside the Box." BBC News. April 25, 2006. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4943382.stm>.
Levinson, Marc. 2006. The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy
Bigger. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Resources in libraries via WorldCat
1913 - 2001
Inventor of the Box That Changed the World
by Dr. Tom Hanchett*
Reprinted with permission from the Tar Heel Junior Historian. Fall 2006.
NC Museum of History
The idea to move goods in big metal boxes was a simple idea, but a powerful one. Make each box as large as a truck-trailer. Put the box on truck wheels and pull it over the highway. Put it on train wheels and pull it over the railroad. Build a huge crane to stack it onboard a boat. Goods would move quickly and surely, because they got packed in the box at the start of the trip and unpacked at the end. In between, no one would touch them.
Malcom P. McLean, of North Carolina, turned that simple idea into an important reality half a century ago. His invention—containerized shipping—changed the world. McLean was born in 1914 in Robeson County. From humble roots, he built a major business empire.
Young Malcom McLean began driving a truck at age seventeen during the hard times of the Great Depression. By the 1950s, he owned one of America’s biggest transportation companies, based in Winston-Salem. On highways throughout the eastern United States, everyone knew the tractor-trailer rigs with the big, red McLean Trucking Company diamond.
McLean had gotten the shipping container idea back in 1937, when he was still driving his own truck. He had sat for a whole day at a New Jersey port waiting for workers to unload his truck and put the goods on a ship. Why not make a truck-trailer that could be lifted onto a ship or onto railroad wheels—without anyone touching the contents?
At age forty-two, wealthy from his trucking business, McLean could at last pursue his dream. He bought an old oil tanker, a large ship, the Ideal-X. His workers modified fifty-eight truck-trailers, making each trailer-box separate from its chassis and wheels. On April 26, 1956, at the port of Newark, New Jersey, McLean watched proudly as a giant crane swung the trailer-boxes up onto the Ideal-X. The ship steamed off toward Houston, Texas. The era of container shipping had begun.
By the mid-1960s, McLean’s SeaLand company had built container-handling facilities in many U.S. pSS Ideal-X. Photo courtesy of Maersk/SeaLand.orts. Going overseas was the next logical step, but the expense was too great for SeaLand.
The Vietnam War was raging, and McLean saw a way he could help the government and help his company. He convinced officials at the Pentagon to build a container-handling facility near Saigon, Vietnam. Just two of McLean’s highly efficient container ships could carry as much military freight as four regular boats. With the Pentagon paying SeaLand ships to travel to Asia, it was easy to stop off in Japan and bring inexpensive manufactured goods back to the United States.
That marked a turning point in the rise of today’s globalized economy. Suddenly, it became very easy for American stores to buy from factories where labor was cheap— anyplace in the world.
Since the 1960s, the globalized economy has brought great changes across North Carolina. On one hand, for example, textile factories throughout the state have closed, unable to match the prices of imports. On the other hand, Wilmington has become a thriving port for container ships. SeaLand is now part of Danish-owned Maersk corporation, which has a huge office building in Charlotte. Charlotte also is the headquarters for a SeaLand spin-off called Horizon Lines, one of America’s largest shipowners.
McLean died in 2001.
*At the time of this article’s publication, Dr. Tom Hanchett was staff historian at the Levine Museum of the New South in Charlotte.
References and additional resources:
Greh, Thomas. The Container Story. Trifilm GmbH, 2006.
NC LIVE resources
Poston, Toby. "Thinking Inside the Box." BBC News. April 25, 2006. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4943382.stm>.
Levinson, Marc. 2006. The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy
Bigger. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Resources in libraries via WorldCat
Malcom P. McLean (1913 - 2001)
“The Father of containerization,” Malcolm P. McLean revolutionized the shipping industry during the 1950s and 1960s and his innovation help increase trade between the United States and China. His big idea: an independent box container (trailer) placed in a truck bed on wheels. These standardized containers were removable from trucks and stackable on barges and provided for more goods to be shipped at cheaper prices. Throughout his entrepreneurial career, McLean adapted to and overcame government regulations.
A farm boy from Maxton, North Carolina, a town in Robeson County, William P. McLean assumed extra work to supplement the family income. After graduating from high school, McLean entered the workforce in the midst of the Great Depression.
The Robeson countian transformed his McLean Trucking from a one-truck, shoestring operation in 1934 into the largest trucking firm in the Southeast and fifth largest in the United States. Like some other Depression businesses, including North Carolina Mutual Life, McLean Trucking grew during lean financial times by cutting costs and its management thinking innovatively. (It was during the Depression that McLean first had the idea for container shipping.) By the 1950s, McLean Trucking consisted of approximately 1,800 trucks shipping products to 37 terminals.
Government regulation prompted McLean to execute his idea for container shipping. Different states had different weight regulations, and truckers were fined frequently for carrying overweight shipments. (This cost no doubt was passed on to the consumer). So, McLean started implementing his idea for container shipping. He purchased Pan-Atlantic Steamship Company so that trucks, with his newly designed and stackable trailers (containers), could transport goods to ports. There, the containers would be hauled by barges to other ports, and be removed and placed onto truck trailer beds and be hauled to warehouses.
Government regulation, once again, forced McLean to adapt. McLean sold his trucking company because seven railroads accused him of violating the Interstate Commerce Act, for he needed ICC’s approval for ownership of two or more carriers with a common interest. After failing to acquire the government agency’s approval, McLean did what many would never do: he sold his interest (75 percent) in McLean Trucking to embark on a risky economic venture. He changed Pan-Atlantic’s name to SeaLand Industries.
Under McLean’s helm, SeaLand Industries grew to be the world’s largest cargo-shipping business. After Ideal X’s maiden voyage, which proved that containers transported goods safely, clients were readily available. With McLean’s encouragement and persuasion, ports started building container-ship compatible facilities; Oakland, for one, attracted Asian trade by building a container-ship facility. When trade authorities recognized that container-friendly ports adapted to the changes in the shipping industry, they started building container-shipping facilities. SeaLand Industries grew exponentially while increasing global trade. because McLean insisted on standardized containers and shipping process.
For $160 million, R.J. Reynolds purchased SeaLand Industries in 1969. According to Anthony J. Mayo and Nitin Nohria in In Their Time: The Greatest Business Leaders of the Twentieth Century, McLean had revolutionized an industry, and by the end of the 1900s, “container shipping was transporting approximately 90 percent of the world’s trade cargo.”
Sources:
Anthony J. Mayo and Nitin Nohria, In Their Time: The Greatest Business Leaders of the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: 2005) and "The Truck Driver Who Reinvented Shipping," Harvard Business School, http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5026.html (accessed December 9, 2009).
“The Father of containerization,” Malcolm P. McLean revolutionized the shipping industry during the 1950s and 1960s and his innovation help increase trade between the United States and China. His big idea: an independent box container (trailer) placed in a truck bed on wheels. These standardized containers were removable from trucks and stackable on barges and provided for more goods to be shipped at cheaper prices. Throughout his entrepreneurial career, McLean adapted to and overcame government regulations.
A farm boy from Maxton, North Carolina, a town in Robeson County, William P. McLean assumed extra work to supplement the family income. After graduating from high school, McLean entered the workforce in the midst of the Great Depression.
The Robeson countian transformed his McLean Trucking from a one-truck, shoestring operation in 1934 into the largest trucking firm in the Southeast and fifth largest in the United States. Like some other Depression businesses, including North Carolina Mutual Life, McLean Trucking grew during lean financial times by cutting costs and its management thinking innovatively. (It was during the Depression that McLean first had the idea for container shipping.) By the 1950s, McLean Trucking consisted of approximately 1,800 trucks shipping products to 37 terminals.
Government regulation prompted McLean to execute his idea for container shipping. Different states had different weight regulations, and truckers were fined frequently for carrying overweight shipments. (This cost no doubt was passed on to the consumer). So, McLean started implementing his idea for container shipping. He purchased Pan-Atlantic Steamship Company so that trucks, with his newly designed and stackable trailers (containers), could transport goods to ports. There, the containers would be hauled by barges to other ports, and be removed and placed onto truck trailer beds and be hauled to warehouses.
Government regulation, once again, forced McLean to adapt. McLean sold his trucking company because seven railroads accused him of violating the Interstate Commerce Act, for he needed ICC’s approval for ownership of two or more carriers with a common interest. After failing to acquire the government agency’s approval, McLean did what many would never do: he sold his interest (75 percent) in McLean Trucking to embark on a risky economic venture. He changed Pan-Atlantic’s name to SeaLand Industries.
Under McLean’s helm, SeaLand Industries grew to be the world’s largest cargo-shipping business. After Ideal X’s maiden voyage, which proved that containers transported goods safely, clients were readily available. With McLean’s encouragement and persuasion, ports started building container-ship compatible facilities; Oakland, for one, attracted Asian trade by building a container-ship facility. When trade authorities recognized that container-friendly ports adapted to the changes in the shipping industry, they started building container-shipping facilities. SeaLand Industries grew exponentially while increasing global trade. because McLean insisted on standardized containers and shipping process.
For $160 million, R.J. Reynolds purchased SeaLand Industries in 1969. According to Anthony J. Mayo and Nitin Nohria in In Their Time: The Greatest Business Leaders of the Twentieth Century, McLean had revolutionized an industry, and by the end of the 1900s, “container shipping was transporting approximately 90 percent of the world’s trade cargo.”
Sources:
Anthony J. Mayo and Nitin Nohria, In Their Time: The Greatest Business Leaders of the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: 2005) and "The Truck Driver Who Reinvented Shipping," Harvard Business School, http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5026.html (accessed December 9, 2009).