Shipping Container

Available for over a year

How a simple steel box changed the face of global trade. Shipping goods around the world was - for many centuries - expensive, risky and time-consuming. But 60 years ago the trucking entrepreneur Malcolm McLean changed all that by selling the idea of container shipping to the US military. Against huge odds he managed to turn "containerisation" from a seemingly impractical idea into a massive industry - one that slashed the cost of transporting goods internationally and provoked a boom in global trade. Tim Harford tells the remarkable story of the shipping container.