Malcom McLean
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Malcolm McLean | |
---|---|
Born | Malcolm Purcell McLean November 14, 1913 |
Died | May 25, 2001 New York City, US | (aged 87)
Other names | "The Father of Containerization" |
Occupation(s) | Inventor and Entrepreneur |
Years active | 1935-2001 |
Known for |
|
Spouses | Sarah McLean (m. 1959–1992)Irena McLean (m. 1993–2001) |
Children | 3 (with first wife) |
Malcolm Purcell McLean (November 14, 1913 – May 25, 2001)
Early life
McLean was born in Maxton, North Carolina in 1913.[2] His first name was originally spelled Malcolm, though he used Malcom later in life.[3]
In 1935, when he finished high school at Winston-Salem, his family did not have enough money to send him to college, but there was enough for Malcolm to buy a used truck.[4]
The same year, McLean, his sister, Clara, and his brother, Jim, founded McLean Trucking Co.[2] Based in Red Springs, North Carolina, McLean Trucking started hauling empty tobacco barrels, with Malcolm as one of the drivers.[5]
Containerization
The idea of transporting trucks on ships was put into practice before World War II. In 1926, regular connection of the luxury passenger train from London to Paris,
In the early 1950s, McLean decided to use the containers commercially. By 1952, he was developing plans to carry his company's trucks on ships along the U.S. Atlantic coast, from North Carolina to New York.[7] It soon became apparent that "trailerships", as they were called, would be inefficient because of the large waste in potential cargo space on board the vessel, known as broken stowage. The original concept was modified into loading just the containers, not the chassis, onto the ships, hence the designation container ship or "box" ship. At the time, U.S. regulations would not allow a trucking company to own a shipping line.
McLean secured a bank loan for $22 million and, in January 1956, bought two
On April 26, 1956, with 100 invited dignitaries on hand, one of the converted tankers, the
In 1956, most cargoes were loaded and unloaded by hand by longshore workers. Hand-loading a ship cost $5.86 a ton at that time. Using containers, it cost only 16 cents a ton to load a ship, 36-fold savings. Containerization also greatly reduced the time to load and unload ships. McLean knew "A ship earns money only when she's at sea", and based his business on that efficiency.[10]
In April 1957, the first container ship, the Gateway City, began regular service between New York, Florida, and Texas. During the summer of 1958 McLean Industries, still using the name Pan-Atlantic Steamship Corporation, inaugurated container service between the U.S. mainland and
In August 1963, McLean opened a new 101-acre (0.41 km2) port facility in
In April 1966, Sea-Land commenced service between New York and Rotterdam, Netherlands; Bremen, Germany; and Grangemouth, Scotland.
In 1967, Sea-Land was invited by the U.S. government to start a container service to South Vietnam. The service to Vietnam produced 40% of the company's revenue in 1968/69.[11]
In late 1968, commercial container ship service was inaugurated from the Far East to the United States. This service was expanded to Hong Kong and Taiwan in 1969, and to Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines in 1971.[citation needed]
To achieve reductions in labor and dock servicing time, McLean followed Roy Fruehauf's lead and became vigilant about standardization.[12] His efforts to increase efficiency resulted in standardized container designs that were awarded patent protection.[13] McLean made his patents available by issuing a royalty-free lease to the International Organization for Standardization.[citation needed]
By the end of the 1960s,
As the advantages to McLean's container system became apparent, competitors quickly adapted. They built bigger ships, larger gantry cranes and more sophisticated containers. Sea-Land needed cash to stay competitive. McLean turned to
Under Reynolds, Sea-Land's profits were intermittent. By the end of 1974, Reynolds had put more than $1 billion into Sea-Land, building huge terminals in New Jersey and Hong Kong and adding to its fleet of container ships.[citation needed]
Sea-Land's biggest expense was fuel, so in 1970, RJR bought the
In 1974, R.J. Reynolds Industries had its best year. Sea-Land's earnings increased nearly 10 times, to $145 million. Aminoil's earnings soared to $86.3 million. Dun & Bradstreet, the financial-ratings firm, named RJR one of its five best-managed companies in America. But in 1975, Sea-Land's earnings dropped sharply, along with Aminoil's. McLean relinquished his Reynolds board seat in 1977 and cut ties with the company.[citation needed]
In June 1984, R.J. Reynolds Industries, Inc. spun off
In September 1986,
Sea-Land's international services were sold to Maersk in 1999, and the combined company was named
The former Sea-Land's domestic services was operated until 2015 as
Subsequent business ventures
In 1968 McLean financed a real estate project in Waveland, Mississippi that has become Diamondhead, Mississippi.[15]
In 1971, the Pinehurst Resort property in Pinehurst, North Carolina was sold to Diamondhead Corporation, a land development company headquartered in a Mountainside, New Jersey and owned by McLean. The venerable old resort which had seen virtually no noticeable changes in its 75 years before its sale became the center of controversy. Finally, in 1982, Pinehurst became the property of Diamondhead's major lenders, who formed a NC corporation called Resort Assets Corporation. With their takeover, a more viable effort was then made to work in concert with Pinehurst village officials to restore the overall community.[16]
In 1978, McLean purchased United States Lines. There, he built a fleet of 4,400-TEU container ships that were the largest afloat at the time. The ships, operating in round-the-world service, were designed in the aftermath of the 1970s oil shortages and were fuel-efficient but slow, and therefore not well-adapted to compete in the subsequent period of cheap oil. USL went bankrupt in 1986.[17] McLean took very personally the criticism directed against him after the collapse of USL and the resulting loss of many jobs associated with and dependent on USL.[citation needed]
In 1982, McLean made the Forbes 400 Richest Americans list with a net worth of $400 million, however, a few years later, having gambled on rising oil prices that failed to materialize, McLean had to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy owing debt of $1.3 billion.[citation needed]
In 1991, at 78, McLean founded
McLean also developed non-maritime inventions, including a means of lifting a patient from a stretcher onto a hospital bed.[2]
Death
McLean died at his home in New York City on May 25, 2001, age 87, of heart failure.
Malcom revolutionized the maritime industry in the 20th century. His idea for modernizing the loading and unloading of ships, which was previously conducted in much the same way the ancient Phoenicians did 3,000 years ago, has resulted in much safer and less-expensive transport of goods, faster delivery, and better service. We owe so much to a man of vision, "the father of containerization," Malcolm P. McLean.[19]
In an editorial shortly after his death, Baltimore Sun stated that "he ranks next to Robert Fulton as the greatest revolutionary in the history of maritime trade."[20] Forbes Magazine called McLean "one of the few men who changed the world."[20]
On the morning of McLean's funeral, container ships around the world blew their whistles in his honor.[2]
Honors
Fortune inducted McLean into its Business Hall of Fame in 1982. In 1995, American Heritage named him one of the ten outstanding innovators of the past 40 years. In 2000, he was named Man of the Century by the International Maritime Hall of Fame.[citation needed]
McLean was inducted into the Junior Achievement U.S. Business Hall of Fame in 1982.[citation needed]
In 2000, McLean received an honorary degree from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy.[citation needed]
McLean is the only person to found three companies that were later listed on the
Trailer Bridge, Inc., which McLean founded in 1992, annually awards the Malcom P. McLean Innovative Spirit Award. The annual McLean Award recognizes an outstanding graduating student at George Mason University, selected by professors.
McLean was inducted into the North Carolina Transportation Hall of Fame in 2006.[23]
Notes and references
- Footnotes
- ^ "Malcolm McLean". invent.org. Retrieved 10 December 2022.
- ^ a b c d e Saxon, Wolfgang (May 29, 2001). "M. P. McLean, 87, Container Shipping Pioneer". The New York Times. Retrieved 2015-07-22.
- ISBN 0-691-12324-1.
- ^ "Men, Money and Ideas Are Remaking A Region". LIFE. Vol. 10, no. 1. 1949. p. 84.
- ^ a b Cudahy, Brian J., - "The Containership Revolution: Malcolm McLean's 1956 Innovation Goes Global" TR News. - (c/o National Academy of Sciences). - Number 246. - September–October 2006. - (Adobe Acrobat *.PDF document)
- ISSN 1339-5629.
- ISBN 978-92-821-0730-0.
- ^ "TANKERS TO CARRY 2-WAY PAYLOADS; Filled Trailer Vans to Form Cargoes for Vessels That Normally Carry Ballast". NEW York Times. April 27, 1956.
- ^ "Who Made America? - Innovators - Malcolm McLean". pbs.org. Retrieved 2015-07-22.
- ^
Ebeling, C. E. (Winter 2009), "Evolution of a Box", Invention and Technology, 23 (4): 8–9, ISSN 8756-7296
- ^ "BBC Radio 4 - Things That Made the Modern Economy, Series 1, Shipping Container".
- ^ "Fruehauf Engineers the Shipping Container," The Fruehauf Trailer Historical Society
- ^ U.S. patent 2,853,968 - (Apparatus for shipping freight)
- ^ Hanseatic Lloyd—News
- ISBN 978-1598582208, pp. 3-4.
- ^ "CITIBANK GROUP TO GET THE PINEHURST RESORT," Special to the New York Times, March 4, 1982
- ^ "Bankruptcy Step Taken By McLean," by Susan F. Rasky, The New York Times, Nov. 25, 1986
- ^ "History of Trailer Bridge Incorporated". Trailerbridge.com. April 15, 2013. Archived from the original on May 22, 2016. Retrieved 2017-03-09.
- ^ "Malcolm McLean Made Waves With Shipping Containers". Investor's Business Daily. investors.com. June 25, 2014. Retrieved 2015-07-22.
- ^ a b "Shipping Pioneer Largely Ignored". - The Baltimore Sun. - June 14, 2001. p.23A.
- ^ "Malcolm McLean; Pioneered use of Shipping Containers". Los Angeles Times. May 29, 2001. Retrieved 2017-03-09.
- ^ "Malcolm McLean 1913-2001". joy.com. May 29, 2001. Retrieved 14 March 2001.
- ^ "2006 Induction and Awards Ceremony Photos". North Carolina Transportation Hall of Fame. June 1, 2013. Archived from the original on February 18, 2015. Retrieved 2015-07-22.
- References
- Marc Levinson. (2016, 2nd ed.). - The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger. - Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
- Marc Levinson. (2020). Outside the Box: How Globalization Changed from Moving Stuff to Spreading Ideas. Princeton University Press.
- Brian J. Cudahy. (2006). - Box Boats: How Container Ships Changed the World. - Fordham University Press
- Frank Broeze. (2002). - "The Globalization of the Oceans: Containerization from the 1950s to the Present". - International Maritime Economic History Association.
- The Container Revolution at sname.org
External links
- Photo of Ideal-X, the first container ship
- Ideal-X and McLean
- The Passing of a Pioneer at thutucxuatnhapkhau.net (Error: unknown archive URL) (archived June 1, 2004)
- The Box That Changed Asia and the World at thutucxuatnhapkhau.net (Error: unknown archive URL) (archived March 1, 2007).
- "The Box That Built the Modern World: How shipping containers made distance irrelevant." By Andrew Curry, July 25, 2013, Nautilus