In random fenced lots south of downtown Seattle shipping containers are stacked eight high. How long have they been there? How long will they be there? Where are the cranes that stacked them? Why is there a tractor trailer on the top of one stack?
Shipping containers were invented in the 1950s in the US to more efficiently load, unload and transport cargo. However, in the 1970s most cargo in the world was still shipped without containers.
Shipping containers come in standardized sizes - TEU (twenty-foot equivalent) and FEU (forty-foot equivalent). They are designed to stack on top of one another and are locked into place on each of the four corners. (The first locking mechanism, still used today was developed in Spokane, Washington.)
While most container ships carry between a few hundred to a thousand TEUs, the largest container ship in the world can carry 12,413 TEUs - an incredible 29 million cubic feet of cargo space!
There are over 55,000 cargo ships in the world today and some twenty million shipping containers. If they were laid end to end they would stretch halfway around the world.
The larger FEU (forty-foot equivalent) containers have grown in popularity and there was a glut of the TEUs around the world as recently as 2020. That changed with the pandemic as the American consumer continued to buy goods. As the need for imports grew, so did the need for shipping containers. The demand in Asia for empty shipping container grew so much that in March of 2020 some companies were focusing resources in getting empty shipping containers back to Asia as quickly as possible. Today nearly 75% of the shipping containers from west coast ports headed to Asia are empty.
Apparently these shipping containers didn't get the word that they are needed.
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