I
n his later years, when asked how he invented the shipping container, freight magnate Malcom McLean would offer an anecdote. One day in the 1930s, the former truck driver was waiting at a pier to deliver bales of cotton. Watching dockers load thousands of cartons and barrels aboard the ship, young McLean wondered why the cargo was not assembled in containers to speed up the process. From that brainstorm, McLean said, the modern shipping container was born two decades later.
