The Shipping Container Is a Blessing to All Humanity | Hacker News Reader

The Shipping Container Is a Blessing to All Humanity

fee.org

83 pointsazizsaya40 comments

When you think of a shipping container, think: API.

A shipping container is simply 8 knuckles (vertices) at a known distance, rigidly connected, with total weight within certain constraints. There are a number of objects that meet this standard; not just closed boxes with big doors at one end, but open frames, trays with big end pieces, tanks in rectangular frames...the possibilities are enormous. And they interconnect with a bunch of other devices (truck beds, railcars and each other on ships are just the most common.

Of course like many a standardized API there are several variants to choose from (more than just BSD vs SysV or emacs vs vi): the standard 40' length can be 20, or 53, and there are high top ones larger than usual. But actually not that many degrees of freedom.

I wonder if this will extend to space industry. I could totally see a large lattice of shipping container knuckles and shafts being created for structural integrity, shipping container sized modules taking over for a spot as they get delivered. Just disconnect the knuckles for a single container worth's lattice, slide out the sized bit of lattice, slide in a shipping container and connect.

Space already has similar standards, like the cubesat. The cubesat is actually based on beanie baby display cases :)

I didn't even know there was such a thing: https://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1403/08cubesats/

THAT is a great "today I learned." Citation also below parent comment

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CubeSat#History

https://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1403/08cubesats/

https://nnsa.energy.gov/blog/nnsa-lab-wins-doe-achievement-a...

I didn't know this before either!

Apparently the Beanie Baby box was the inspiration for the form factor and maybe used for prototyping, but the final standard isn't exactly identical to it.

There is this: http://www.internationaldockingstandard.com

Add: not convex (no sticky-outy parts). It all fits inside a rectangular control volume.

Link to source paper to save everyone else the pain: https://sci-hub.hk/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jinteco.2015.09...

Despite the fact that this OP's article is thin on content, fee.org is a cancerous website. Upon clicking the article the site demands notification permission, then loads a shitload of sidebar junk. To avoid this I attempt to use Firefox reader mode, but that just loads a different article about automation (but with the shipping container headline).

EDIT: The paper is a solid read.

I'll never understand how people live without ad blockers.

I saw the same crap running uBlock Origin.

I do have ublock origin installed. It was all their on-site elements screwing shit up.

uBlock Origin, Chrome.. no prob

It wasn't a blessing to longshoremen (manual labor at ports) worldwide. That doesn't mean we should remain stuck in the past, driving horse-drawn carriages so the buggy whip makers can stay in business, but let's not gloss over the very serious downside to millions of people, their families and communities. Two thoughts:

1. I always try to remember: Capital can move and technology can change far faster than people can. The factory can move to another country far faster than its 10,000 employees can move to a new job, possibly in a new city. Shipping containers can be implemented far faster than millions (or more?) of longshoremen worldwide can learn new trades, find jobs, and return to their former incomes. I support innovation, but we should take care of the people who can't possibly keep up and who have little power over their fate.

2. If technology comes along that disrupts the careers of the politically weak, such as longshoremen, people say that it's just the nature of the game; that's innovation and they should take care of themselves. We just focus on the overall economic gains and are excited. But if new tech disrupts the politically strong, such as the music and film industries, then the technology is outlawed and law enforcement protects their privilege. Ironically, it's the weak who need that protection far more than the strong.

I used to think that we all should sacrifice for overall economic efficiency; that it's the rules of the game we all playI find it harder and harder to justify sacrificing the welfare of human beings for more cash, and of course I realized the 'rules' were made by a specific group of people to serve themselves.

As detailed in The Box, the unions in NYC back in the day were strong enough that they managed to negotiate for no jobs lost when containerization came steamrolling through. Lots of people for decades were paid to not work, and hiring freezes and attrition naturally declined the workforce from its highs of the 1960s and 1970s (containerization meant that roughly 100x tons of freight could be moved per person)

While we're remembering, let's also remember that one of the major benefits of shipping containers was preventing losses to theft by longshoremen.

It's basically an anti-protectionism web site. The book, "The Box" covers this subject very well.

Two things made international trade really work - containers and faxes. Faxes made it possible to do business efficiently across language boundaries. Invoices and purchase order forms make it across language barriers with some struggling on both sides, and if there's a problem, there's reasonably quick feedback. Trying to do that by phone or telegram or paper mail is much tougher. At last, the paperwork got there before the cargo did, which made shipping work far batter.

Standards are a great blessing for humanity. We don't pay much attention to standards but without them, society would be more difficult. Shipping containers are just another sample of their benefits. One that many of us will remember is the standardization of power cords for Cellphones. There was a time all phones had their power connectors which made it impossible to share power chargers. Now we take it for granted that we can grab one from a friend or go to the store and buy one without much trouble. A small step but one of many that make a large difference for society.

Interesting that Apple is exempt

They aren't: they ship an adaptor in the box in jurisdictions subject to this law.

Thanks, didn't know that.

Still, seems like a loophole if the goal is to reduce waste.

What jurisdictions are those? I was thinking maybe China but it doesn't look like it from apple.com/cn. In the EU there was just a "memorandum of understanding" between manufacturers (under threat of legislation if they didn't sort things out themselves) and Apple feel they fulfill it since their charging cable has USB-A at one end.

If anyone is interested, The Box is a book that covers this topic in a lot more depth. It’s truly excellent

There is also a good BBC documentary, "The Box that chnaged Britain" about the social and economic impact of the shipping container on Britain.

Agree, really worth your time reading.

Thanks, added to my book list.

"The Box" is a great book. If anyone is into podcasts I can recommend this Omega Tau episode http://omegataupodcast.net/146-container-shipping/ Full disclosure: I am one of the persons being interviewed.

Another great book is "Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry That Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate" by Rose George. It covers the wider world of international shipping but containers are obviously a key part of the story.

Andi f anyone can find it the documentary "The box that changed Britain" http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00scpzn is really good, especially on the social aspects (e.g. dock workers and indistrial heartland collapse).

EDIT found a version online: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5f7n8v

If only they weren't so damn heavy. A significant proportion of the mass being shipped is often the container itself. There are efforts to make an equally strong and almost-as-cheap container out of composites, but unfortunately nothing has caught on yet.

Maybe the most important improvement modern society could achieve - make the dang box lighter. Might accomplish more than all the social policy changes

Flexport is doing a boat cruise in the port of Oakland in May featuring talks about the history and future of trade. if you're into shipping containers email me, Ryan@flexport.com and I'll get you an invite for the cruisee!

Discovered a litany of amazing startups within the shipping container itself, all sorts of bags, bins, basically things to compartmentalized the space within a shipping container for a variety of things being transported. Huge food grade bags that can transport bulk wine, for example, rigged up safely inside a container.

Neat article, love learning about things like this. For those who want more, check out the Containers podcast [1]. Not usually a big podcast fan but I enjoyed this one a lot.

https://soundcloud.com/containersfmg

Shipping containers can also be turned into cheap houses when they're decommissioned. A search for "container home" brings a lot of results, some of them truly amazing though definitely less cheap.

For background, I don't have serious experience with this. I've worked with businesses that moved containers, I've talked about getting containers for my own stuff, and priced things out from that angle, and found the whole thing too expensive, even if you have places to put the containers where people won't complain.

I do, however, think container aesthetics are pleasing and find the idea of a container house (or modular workshops) to be pretty cool.

Container houses generally require effort that make them less cheap than things built specifically to be housing, unless you can somehow dodge zoning because you are in a 'container house'

If you've ever spent any time in a container during the day, you know that being in an un-insulated steel can when said can is in the sun is not a generally pleasant experience.

Building a small structure to reasonable durability standards is actually pretty cheap; I bet you could do a wooden shed of the interior size of a cargo container for less than the market value of said container, most places in the world, assuming the zoning restrictions weren't different for the container vs. the shed.

If you need your house to move and you are willing to accept the space limitations, it might make sense to build in a cargo container... but if you are willing to give up the mobility, you can usually get a better or cheaper living structure.

Even then, I'd question it. I mean, unquestionably, it would be damn cool, but by the time you made it livable, I don't know if it wouldn't be cheaper to just buy a used camper trailer.

My experience trying to get cargo containers moved is that most of the services for doing so are not designed for not-very-often one-off moves; I think getting someone to move your fifth wheel trailer would probably be cheaper than getting a cargo container of similar size moved, assuming you are on the same continent.

The exception, of course, is if you live in a place where cargo containers have a very low market value, and where the cargo containers are where they need to be (or the equipment required to move them is cheap)

Another issue I ran into when exploring this is that... well, you really want to clean these things out. A cheap, used cargo container needs some serious work just to get the ickies cleared out.

it's a pretty bad idea because 6 mil plastic has a better R value, or insulation value, then these shipping containers. You can't get around that problem easily without spending more then you would on a regular structure.

But we have solutions for cheap housing already. The housing problem doesn't come down to the cost of building houses, it comes down to the acceptance that we need them.

Housing problems in cities are usually due to NIMBYs opposing high rise buildings.

It's a land shortage, rather than an actual housing shortage.

Yes, takes good design to make it work, though. 8 feet wide is sort of restrictive when you start laying things out.

My experience is this: Up at my weekend mountain cabin, I have a 40 foot container that is my "tool shed". Weather-tight but no-longer-seaworthy containers can be had at reasonable prices. They make excellent secure tool/stuff storage. But laying out an efficient and effective floor plan with shelves, an aisle, and out-of-they-way parking for things like a wood splitter takes a bit of thought.

I've thought off-and-on about how to turn the 320 ft^2 of a container into a cabin. In the end, I think I'd rather work with CMU blocks, unless I wanted something portable ("Portable" in the Army sense of the word.....)

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