If anyone is interested in learning the history of this, a good book (2e: ISBN 978-0-691-17081-7):
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Box_(Levinson_book)
It really took off during/after the Vietnam War as the Pentagon saw its benefits in efficiency and not having to use Old School longshoreman and switching to cranes.
The first picture in the Wikipedia article is what I mean: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphora .
Makes me wonder what seemingly obvious thing we're not aware of right now that will be commonplace 50 years from now.
It removes many of the barriers to competition and reduces the risk of large players creating monopolies.
I think it’s fair to say that much of what we see in tech is deliberately engineered to avoid standardisation in order to protect competitive advantage.
Wired did an interesting article on standardisation years ago.
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.wired.com/2002/01/standar...
Containers have big downsides too... but technology allowed costs to be vaporized with containers.
The other big thing is that containers appeared in the US as the railroads entered their death spirals. You can build a dock anywhere and have trucks show up from 100 companies quickly compared to the negotiation required to live railroads. Think about how quickly the NYC maritime business died and moved to New Jersey... that’s a market that represented ~10-15% of the US population at that time.