Many people think the Shipping Container was invented in China — not true. The first shipping container was invented and patented in 1956 by an American named Malcolm Mc Lean. Mc Lean was not an ocean shipper, but was a trucker and by 1956 he owned the largest trucking fleet in the South and the fifth largest trucking company in all the United States. He saved his money and bought his first truck in 1934. During those years all cargo was loaded and unloaded in odd sized wooden crates. The process was very slow and certainly not standardized. After observing this slow and inefficient process for 20 years, he finally decided to step back and develop some standardized way of loading cargo from trucks to ships and warehouses. Malcolm then purchased Pan Atlantic Tanker Company, which owned a bunch of fairly rusted tankers. He re-named the new shipping company Sea-Land Shipping. With this shipping company he could finally experiment with better ways to load and un-load trucks and ships. After many experiments, his final design is what we know now as the Shipping Container… super strong, uniform design, theft resistant, stackable, easy to load, unload, truck, rail, ship, and certainly store. Matson, on the West coast of the US also attempted the container concept but failed sorely. The final boost to standardize Mc Lean’s concept was the US Navy and by the early 70’s were globally accepted. So, in fact, although Mc Lean had the first concept and working system in 1956, it was the US military who finally did what was necessary to make the ISO shipping container accepted by every shipping line and every country of the world. Because it was so much faster and organized to load-unload, the cost of loading freight was reduced by more than 90%. Thus, the cost of products you sell or buy were reduced greatly because of the invention and standardization of the ISO shipping container.