ABSTRACT
In October 1931, 25 years before intermodal pioneer Malcom McLean launched the container ship SS Ideal-X, a truck carrying a cargo container departed from a loading dock in Baltimore, Maryland. At the harbour, a crane lifted the box onto a ship, which then sailed across Chesapeake Bay to a rail terminal on the opposite shore. Although historians have largely accepted McLean's iconic status as the father of containerisation, McLean did not develop any of the constituent technological or organisational elements that made that service possible. Containerisation and its attendant potential for global economic and social change antedated McLean's career. In their focus on the post-war history of the container, many historians give short shrift to the largely unrealised potential of containerisation during the interwar period. They typically attribute the container's lacklustre performance during the 1920s and 1930s to adverse regulatory factors, particularly the reluctance of Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) commissioners to sanction the development of a new transportation technology.
