Imagine you've just left your homeport for a journey across the Pacific Ocean. Your ship is carrying thousands of tons of goods that must be distributed to hundreds of customers at six different ports you'll be stopping at after you cross the ocean. You might encounter bad weather or ocean storms on your journey.

What do you do?

How do you keep all your cargo safe and in good condition as you travel?

How do you make sure each shipment gets unloaded at the right port and delivered to the right customer?

Well, right about now, you're probably pretty thankful you can ship most of your goods inside cargo containers. Because cargo containers make life in the shipping industry a lot easier.

Until about 30 years ago, the goods carried in a ship's hold were jumbled together in nets and crates. As you can probably imagine, this was not the easiest way to move goods around the world. Things bundled into a net or wooden box could easily be damaged by seawater or rain. They were very difficult to load and unload - in fact, it used to take almost five days to unload a cargo ship. And it was very complicated to determine which goods belonged to which customers.

Cargo containers were invented during World War II to make shipping goods easier and more standardized. Shipping companies started using them during the 1970s. The containers - strong, weather-proof metal boxes - could be stacked in a ship's hold, pulled on a truck trailer, or even loaded onto a train car. They kept goods dry and safe from the weather. And they made unloading and sorting goods very easy and quick, since each shipment was stored in its own, individual container.

Computers have helped make cargo containers even more efficient. Today, every shipment is tracked by computer. That way, ship captains and the longshore workers who load and unload container ships know exactly where each container is going and what it contains. This means that a ship can be loaded in order, with the containers that will be unloaded first loaded on last.

Even though cargo containers are very sturdy, they and the cargo ships that carry them can be damaged by severe weather. That's why ship captains keep a lookout for storms. But even in very bad weather, cargo is much safer inside a container than outside.

Cargo containers have been so successful for sea travel that they are also used for goods that are shipped by air. They've changed the entire shipping business!

One other thing cargo containers do well is help shipping companies and ports measure how many loads of cargo they've shipped. Containers are measured in something called a TEU. That stands for a 'twenty-foot-equivalent unit,' or the amount of freight that can be carried in a 20-foot long container. The Boomerang Box, which is 40 feet long counts for 2 TEUs when it travels through a port.

Assignment:

Use the Internet to look up a port near your hometown. See if you can find how many TEUs of cargo the port handled last year. How many Boomerang Boxes of cargo does that equal? Can you see why cargo containers are so important with so much cargo coming and going?

Check out past Trade Topics entries!