April 17, 2021 - Stacked Containers

 

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.

January 26, 2020 - Blue Tease

A Seattle Filter wouldn't apply this morning as the clouds left a little opening for a tease of blue sky.  By early afternoon, the sun had come out.  With a mid afternoon soccer match scheduled, Murphy's Law dictates a change to rain!

 

The Hong Kong flagged container ship Seaspan Hudson arrives from Elliott Bay assisted by a pair of tugs.  The 112,000 ton, 1105 foot vessel (3 times the length of the ferries that ply Puget Sound!) is listed as having a carrying capacity of 10,000 TEU (Twenty Foot Equivalent), or 10,000 20' foot containers!  Each intermodal container has about 1000 cubic feet in volume.

November 8, 2015 - Terminal 18 Cranes

Four of the ten ZPMC quayside cranes on the Port of Seattle's Terminal 18 intermodal yard on Harbor Island as seen from West Seattle.

Terminal 18 has four berths on its 4400 foot length in which container ships can anchor, load and unload cargo.  With a depth of 50 feet, there is plenty of draft for most of the world's container ships, many of whom are over a 1000 feet long.  The standard measurement for intermodal shipping is the TEU, or twenty foot equivalent.  It represents the cargo that can be stored in a 20 foot long shipping container.  Through Terminal 18, and the other port terminals, over 2 million containers are handled each year.  This is enough to rank Seattle's port as the 57th largest in the world.  The cranes in the foreground are 210 feet high, have a capacity of over 65 long tons and can delicately hoist loads at 600 feet per minute.

In the background can be seen Century Link and Safeco Fields and Harborview hospital and the south end of the downtown skyline.

Below, Queen Anne Hill, the Space Needle and the north end of downtown Seattle are visible across Elliott Bay as one looks down the West Seattle Bridge.