Malcom McLean had an unremarkable start to his career. Born a farmer’s son in 1913, after finishing high school he initially worked as a gas station attendant in North Carolina. He went on to found a small trucking company with his brother and sister that allowed him to feed his family during the Great Depression. The McLeans built a successful business transporting and storing agricultural goods, and by 1940 it had expanded to 30 trucks. They could quite happily have settled for that, but Malcom McLean wasn’t content with growing the business – he also wanted to keep improving it. He was particularly frustrated by the long waiting times while the vehicles were unloaded – and as a driver himself, he knew what he was talking about.

One day, as he watched the longshoremen unloading cargo from trucks and loading it onto ships for the umpteenth time, he was once again struck by the inefficiency of doing things this way. “Would it not be great,” he thought, “if my trailer could simply be lifted up and placed on the ship?” In 1955, he sold his stake in the McLean Trucking Company, bought a shipping company and converted two oil tankers. He designed steel containers that could be secured side by side and between-deck by means of a special fastening. He also had trailer chassis designed that enabled the transport of removable containers. In April 1956, his first container ship, the Ideal-X, finally set sail from Port Newark, New Jersey, carrying 58 of the world’s first ever standard containers.