Success of Container Shipping Changed the Industry Georgia Ports moved its first shipping container in 1965 Malcom McLean recognized the prob- lem. On the day before Thanksgiving in 1937, after driving from North Car- olina with a load of cotton, he waited at a port in New Jersey for nine hours as dockworkers slowly manhandled cargo onto ships. He also visualized a solution: Why not take the whole trailer off the back of his truck and put it on board the vessel? Putting that into practice took time. By 1955, his trucking company domi- nated Southern roads with more than 1,750 trucks and 37 transport termi- nals. But, tired of jousting with federal regulations and restrictions, he gam- bled and launched a new venture. McLean garnered $6 million from selling the trucking company; turned around and secured a bank loan for $42 million; and then purchased the Pan-Atlantic Steamship Co. for $7 mil- lion. GAPORTS.COM In January of 1956, he acquired two World War II-era oil tankers. They were quickly remodeled to carry containers. And on April 26, one of them, the S.S. Ideal X, sailed out of Newark, N.J., and headed for Houston. The cargo: 58 con- tainers, and 15,000 tons of petroleum. It was an immediate success. Orders for return cargo were phoned into Pan-Atlantic before the Ideal X docked. Finally, 19 years after that long day at the New Jersey docks, McLean’s idea proved its worth. He moved quickly to expand. McLean renamed the shipping company Sea-Land in 1960, and opened a new 101-acre facility in New Jersey to accommodate the increased traffic in 1963. In Savannah, the Georgia Ports Authority recognized the possibilities of this new approach. The math was irrefutable. Using long- shoremen, the cost at that time to load and unload a ton of cargo was $5.86 a ton. Using containers, the cost plummeted to $0.16 a ton. So, in the 1960s, unions and shipping com- panies across the country negotiated this new landscape. In San Francisco and New York, a settlement was reached. In Savannah, a longshoremen’s strike in January of 1965 halted all shipping. It lasted eight full weeks. Finally, on March 7, dock workers returned to their jobs. Later that year, the GPA handled its first shipment of containerized cargo. That was a glimpse into the future. In April of 1967, the GPA and the Holland- American Line partnered and scheduled direct container service every two weeks to and from Antwerp, Rotter- dam, Bremen, Hamburg and Le Havre.
