I’d like to sink that sonofabitch,” said a top official of the International Longshoreman’s Association as the first ship carrying containers sailed on April 26, 1956 from Newark in New Jersey to Houston, Texas.Containerisation was the brainchild of North Carolina trucker Malcom McLean, who saw the opportunity to reduce cargo-handling costs and speed up the delivery of freight.It would take 10 years before Sea-Land, the shipping line he started, inaugurated the first transatlantic service. It was another five years before the shipping lines on the Europe-SA trade and authorities in South Africa accepted the concept and worked together toward a cutover, a triumph of centralised planning on C-Day, July 1, 1977.The longshoremen were right to fear for their livelihoods. Even in 1956 McLean reduced the cost of hand-loading a ship, which at the time cost $5.85 a ton, to 16c a ton. On the basis that “a ship only earns when it is at sea”, he also wanted containerisation to reduce the time it took to load and unload ships.McLean was a born innovator and went on to build and list three companies on the New York Stock Exchange, the only person to achieve this, and two more on the Nasdaq.Forbes Magazine wrote on his death in 2001 that he was one of the few people who had changed the world. Containerisation, reducing the need for repeated handling of individual pieces of cargo, also improved reliability, reduced cargo theft and damages, and cut inventory costs by shortening transit times.His invention is credited with being one of the main drivers of globalisation.On the morning of his funeral, containerships around the world blew their horns in his honour.Fifty years ago, John H Marsh, the founder of this title, Freight News, started the publication as a quick-read newspaper and broke the custom of long lead times for professional magazines with an emphasis on news. The following year, he alternated Freighting News Fortnightly with Containerising News Fortnightly to report on the momentous changes that were being planned for SA’s international trade routes a few years down the line.Deregulation – a triumph of perseveranceThe second freight-altering change in South Africa in the last 50 years has been the deregulation of road transport. Today we fume because of all the trucks on the road, but at least the cargo is moving. Fifty years ago South African Railways (SAR) aggressively asserted its right to compel cargo owners to use rail.This right went back to the formation of the Union in 1910. Then the Railways were given a developmental role, specifically to help the agricultural and industrial sectors. To this end, they developed a complicated tariff book that charged different rates for different goods based on the mileage carried. This was to enable Railways to cross-subsidise the goods it carried. Already, by the 1920s, motor transport was cherry-picking the high-tariff goods, and so the government introduced Local Road Transportation Boards which had the role of protecting rail. Truckers had to apply for a motor carrier certificate where SAR might lose business. As a rule, SAR objected to almost all applications.To get a transport permit was high art; so much so that in the 1980s there was an incongruous situation where members of the Public Carriers’ Association, most of whom had managed to get some permits, had to have considerable discussion before agreement was reached to support government deregulation of their industry.One can only imagine South Africa’s economy today if every company that had something to move between cities was compelled to use our rail services only.Digital explosion has changed the world foreverI will deal with the third explosive force with regard to how it relates to us in freight media.The internet and the digital age were welcomed by us in the late 1980s when we introduced our first online publication. As a news organisation, we had always gone to extraordinary lengths to get the news out first. To do this, we took the highly unusual step – for a small business-to-business publisher – of doing our own printing. The first edition of Freighting News Fortnightly in 1973 was printed by ourselves in our office on the 12th f loor of a Johannesburg city block. Heneways Freight Services, in the same building, arranged for the three-ton Heidelberg printing machine to be lifted up the lift well. That allowed us to write articles, lay out the pages, print, and start distribution the same day. This was a far cry from the six weeks’ lead time monthly magazines usually needed.With that culture we embraced the concept of online publishing even before the internet. Our first online publication was for the travel trade. Launched with the help of South African Airways, and using their network, from 1989 travel agents thrived on getting our daily ‘News at Noon’.When the internet age dawned, we started Cargo Info Africa. It was Covid-19 that catapulted us fully into the digital age. With lockdown imminent in March 2020, the decision was made to stop printing the news on paper, sell our printing works, and invest in a state-of-the-art system for Freight News. Still under development, the new iteration will allow the freight community to virtually gather around and communicate with each other in areas of freight most relevant to them. Watch this space.
