Bleary eyed, I tore open my sachet of Quaker Oats, dumped it into a bowl, popped some milk in, and set the microwave to whirr for two minutes. This cost me. Usually it’s a bit of bran, cold milk, and it’s wolfed down in T-minus three minutes, give or take four. I hadn’t factored in the other variables and I missed my bus into work. No way was I waking up earlier, no deal.
A revelation hit me the next morning. I dried my hair while my porridge was rotating in the background, which bought me more time to scoff the blonde magma. Normally I’d separate the two – a foolish decision in hindsight. This sweet symphony of white noise and heat meant I caught my bus on time, and as each regular shuffled on at their usual stops and took up their positions, it made me question their morning routines. Were they chasing efficiency too?
Enter logistics hall-of-famer and the father of containerization Malcom McLean. Back in the 1930’s he’d parked his truck dockside and watched in growing disbelief as workers laboriously wheeled goods over to the side of a ship, attached them to slings, and precariously hoisted them into designated spots. Frustration led to a flash of inspiration: let’s just bung all this stuff in containers and have trucks slide them onto ships.
Sheets of corrugated steel, that’s all shipping containers are, really. Built as vessels for storing things and transporting them across the sea. Yet they’ve collectively scrunched the world up, and given us the ability to stretch our arms across entire continents to pluck something valuable right from its source.
And it’s only when you glance at the likes of this stunning visualisation of the global shipping trade by Kiln that their impact is put into perspective.
Look at it! It’s like we’re hunched over with our hands clasping our knees, peering at a colony of ants tending to their nest. Switch to another map view and the containers morph into spiders, instead, and it’s as if in our hunger for parts, for food, and for clothing we’ve spun a silken web over the ocean to feed our economy.
Shipping containers work tirelessly to keep global trade churning, and I can’t help but humanise these steel boxes as unsung heroes hauling our stuff day in, day out. You could even say I feel for them a little bit, but comfort can be taken from the kinship they share between each other. No matter where they’re from, they all speak the same language, and they all slot together. When a crane thunks one container on top of another, I like to think there’s a special metallic twang which resonates throughout the hold communicating each new arrival, which is then met by quiet approval as the sound dissipates; a wordless embrace of sorts. Without one another, there is no trade, after all.