Will Calamity Befall Kalama?
By Jock O’Connell
Here’s a good reason for ordering a round of drinks for friends and colleagues in the maritime industry. 2018 marks the fortieth anniversary of the year when the Twenty-Foot Equivalent Unit or TEU became an official metric for the U.S. container trade. Beginning in January 1978, the custodians of the nation’s statistics on oceanborne trade began counting the loaded and empty TEUs handled at America’s ports. Up to that point, maritime trade had been measured chiefly in tonnage and volume.
We all know the story of how Malcolm McLean inaugurated container shipping in August 1956. But carrying metal boxes on the decks of ships normally built to handle break-bulk shipments left a lot of room for variability in the sizes and shapes of those boxes. McLean’s first containers were reportedly 11 feet long. Credit goes to Joseph Bonney at the Journal of Commerce who, some months back, reminded us of the role the late John Griffith played in introducing international service involving ships refitted to hold containers below deck. That development came in March 1966, and it obviously compelled a higher level of standardization in container dimensions if the boxes were to fit into the cells designed for stacking containers below deck.
According to box historian Marc Levinson, the first carrier with fully containerized ships, Pan-Atlantic, used 35-foot containers because that was the maximum length then allowed on highways in New Jersey, where Pan-Atlantic was based. But there was much disagreement among all hands. For example, Matson argued for a 24-foot box, which it believed would best handle its particular mixes of cargo. After much haggling, containers with lengths of 10, 20, 30, and 40 feet were declared “standard” by the U.S. Federal Maritime Board (the predecessor of MARAD) in April 1961. 8”x 8.5” was similarly established as standards for height and width. A 45-foot container subsequently came to be considered standard. After years of adjustments and experience, 40-foot boxes today account for around 90% of waterborne containers, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.
Yet it would be another twelve years after containers began to be stacked in cells before a new metric – the TEU was formally embraced by the Maritime Administration to keep tabs on the numbers of containers entering or departing U.S. seaports. As of January 1, 1978, Form MA-578A was revised to eliminate two statistical categories (number of containers and cargo cubic feet) while creating two new categories -- loaded TEUs and empty TEUs. Even then, the agency continued for several years to give priority to tonnage (expressed in long tons) in its container cargo reports.
The impetus for this accounting change largely came from the rapid growth of America’s containerized trade. Between 1972 and 1978, the number of containers moving through U.S. ports nearly tripled, from 1,090,500 TEUs to 3,038,900 TEUs.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about container trade at the time was how balanced it was. Of the 3,038,900 TEUs that moved through U.S. ports in 1978, 1,506,900 TEUs were imported and 1,532,000 were exported. A mere 197,800 empties were also handled, 60% of which were outbound. Also, very much unlike today, over a quarter (28.8%) of the containerized traffic moved on U.S. flag carriers.
The tonnage to TEU ratio across all U.S. maritime trades was then 9.94 long tons (2,240 pounds) per TEU. On Trade Route 29, the transpacific route between the U.S. West Coast and the Far East, the ratio was smaller, 7.38 long tons per TEU.
Still, maritime trade statisticians remained focused more on tonnage than TEU counts. The Maritime Administration report for 1978 observed, for example, that “Trade Route No. 29 (U.S. Pacific/Far East) remained the leading trade route for containerized cargo transportation with 9.6 million long tons moved.” Almost as an afterthought, the report also noted that 1,032,000 TEUs or 34.0% of all TEUs transported via U.S. ports in 1978 moved on the TR-29 Route. Not surprisingly, California ports accounted for 28.7% of the nation’s TEU trade, while ports in Oregon and Washington handled another 11.5% of the nation’s TEU traffic.
However, New York was still the nation’s leading container port, with 744,000 loaded TEUs and 36,000 empties in 1978. Next was the Port of Los Angeles with 378,000 loaded TEUs and 18,000 empties. Seattle was third with 276,000 loaded TEUs and 23,000 empties. Oakland was fifth in TEUs handled with 211,000 loaded TEUs and 15,000 empties. The Port of Long Beach ranked seventh (after Baltimore and Norfolk) with 161,000 loaded TEUs and 8,000 empties. The Port of San Francisco came next with 120,000 loaded and 8,000 unloaded TEUs. Further down the list of the nation’s top container ports in 1978 were Portland (43,000 loaded and 2,000 empty TEUs) and Tacoma (25,000 loaded and 4,000 empty TEUs.)
By far the leading trading partner in U.S. oceanborne containerized trade that year was Japan, which alone accounted for a 27.3% share of U.S. container movements. Netherlands followed with a 10.0% share. West Germany held an 8.7% share, followed by Hong Kong (6.2%) and the United Kingdom and Taiwan (both with 6.0% shares). Even with the announcement in 1978 that the U.S. would formally recognize the People’s Republic of China as of January 1, 1979, containerized trade directly with Chinese ports went unmeasured.
By 1983, when MARAD discontinued its annual, detailed reports on U.S. container trade, containerized trade had begun to shift even more decidedly toward the Pacific. The top five U.S. partners were Japan (22.8%), Taiwan (13.0%), Netherland (10.0%), Hong Kong (7.3%), and West Germany (6.5%). Down in 26th place with a 0.6% share of the U.S. container trade -- and wedged in between Venezuela and the United Arab Emirates) -- was the People’s Republic of China.
New York remained the nation’s top container port in 1983 with 795,000 TEUs. But the next four biggest ports were all of the West Coast: Los Angeles, Oakland, Seattle, and Long Beach. The subsequent rapid growth of U.S. trade with the emerging economies of East Asia – the Four Tigers of Singapore, South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan – and ultimately China swung the U.S. container trade even more decisively West.
Last year, Los Angeles led all ports by handling 9,343,193 total TEUs, with neighboring Long Beach moving another 7,544,507 TEUs. The Port of New York/New Jersey ran third with 6,710,817 TEUs.
Today, China is the dominant source and destination of U.S. containerized trade, last year accounting for 25.5% of containerized exports and 35.9% of containerized imports. And, while East and Gulf Coast ports have been steadily increasing their shares of America’s container trade since the June 2016 opening of the expanded Panama Canal, the great maritime complex in San Pedro Bay is by far the nation’s largest gateway for goods transported by sea in metal boxes.
Finally, among historians and biblical scholars, there is absolutely no consensus about how many cubits equal twenty feet. Traditionally, the length of a cubit was thought to be the distance from the elbow to the fingertips. But whose? Mine, Lebron James’ or that Noah guy? Estimates in the relevant literature vary from roughly 13 inches to 21 inches. So, the length of a TEU could range from roughly 11.5 cubits to 18.5. In Genesis, the Ark’s divinely-ordained specs were three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide, and thirty cubits in height (or heighth, if you went to a Catholic grammar school).
PMSA will award no prizes for determining how many TEUs could be accommodated on Noah’s decidedly non-cellular Ark.
The commentary, views, and opinions expressed by Jock O’Connell are his own and do not reflect the views or positions of the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association. PMSA does not endorse, support, or make any representations regarding the content provided by any third party commentator.