Making containers pay
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I M H symposium reviewed by John Darker
• Developments in containerization occur so rapidly that every conference is likely to yield news of interest to existing and potential container users. Last week's two-day symposium of the Institute of Materials Handling at Newport, Mon, on the theme of "Freight containers their use and economics," covered a lot of ground not touched on at earlier seminars of the Institute.
Mr. P. H. Sinclare, research director, National Ports Council, hinted that the containers versus pallets issue is still not finally resolved. He quoted a recent study which suggested that pallet transport provided a lower cost system than a container system where inland transport movements were relatively short.
A very imformative paper by Mr. E. Horrit, managing director, Duramin Engineering Co.
Ltd., described some of the problems involved in making 20ft containers within the required tolerances of the ISO. Mr. G. W. Hollwey, managing director, Bellferry Ltd, urged the need for the entire reconstruction of the transportation system as opposed to the grafting of the new technology on to the old-fashioned system inherited from sailing ship days. And Mr. J. Posner, assistant general manager of British Railways shipping and international services division, sketched in the background to the so-called North Sea rates war.
It was appropriate that Mr, Ivor James, area superintendent of BR's Freightliner division, should be a speaker at the sympo sium because the delegates' programme included a night visit to the Pengam terminal.
Mr. James's summary of Freightliner developments to date revealed that 29 per cent of all current forwardings were now on behalf of road hauliers or C-licensees acting as principals. Twenty-five thousand containers were now being carried each four-week period, a figure that was rising rapidly. There were services on 40 routes covering 28 terminals and within a year or so there would be 48 routes. Twenty wagon trains instead of 15 wagon trains could be anticipated on the more propular routes, and part-train move' ments from two or three originating terminals which could be joined to form a 15/20 wagon
train for the trunk. movement were planned. By the end of 1968 BR expected to be carrying about 6m tons per annum on the Freightliner .services and the target for the mid-70s was around 30m tons.
Mr. J. Posner's paper, 'The international operation of container traffic," stressed that containers as we knew them today would never have come about but for the fact that an ever-increasing proportion of traffic passed from rail to road with the invention of the internal combustion engine. Containerization was a logical extension of road transport, as proved by the American Sea-Land company where a few far-sighted people extended their road haulage operation to the sea.
While it was not a tragedy that many large container operators used non-standard containers on closed-circuit operations he regret
ted that as soon as the International Standards Organization had introduced container standards everybody seemed set on changing them. There was a continuous argument about Bft and 8ft 6in, high containers which was regrettable, though not fatal. because the height of a container was the second most important measurement but not the most important. It was deplorable that as soon as an 8ft width was generally accepted various people for various reasons were trying to introduce containers of varying width. "The German Railways for instance are determined", said Mr Posner, "to have 8ft 4n. wide containers to equal the width of the average road lorry. This, in my opinion, is pure opportunism and ignores completely the advantages which containerization can bring about."
Mr. Posner revealed that from February 1969 BR would operate four sailings a day from Harwich, two to Belgium, one to Holland and one to France. Five ships would be involved and the total capital outlay, including crane's and ships, would be about £6m. "We are giving all these schemes a fairly short commercial life, first because life is developing so rapidly these days that we do not know how long even the present container system will survive, and secondly because we must look . . . at the Channel Tunnel which may well come into being during the lifetime of our scheme."
Mr. Posner said that on the basis of straight line depreciation the Harwich services called for the writing off of between £500,000 and £600,000 annually. But he was confident on the basis of the past six months' experience that during the lifetime of the scheme at least 2m containers would be carried. He forecast that 100,000 containers would be carried from Harwich in 1969. The fixed cost, including the ships and cranes at each end, but not including the containers, would be in the region of £5 10s to £6. In about three or four years' time, when the throughput was expected to increase to the Parkeston Quay capacity of 200,000 containers annually the fixed costs proportion of the transit reduced to £3 per container. This explained why, over a year ago, it was possible for BR to come out with rates which were thought to be unrealistic by com petitors.
Although the average freight rate per ton quay-to-quay on short sea services to Holland had been brought down to about 30s per ton Mr. Posner thought some goods such as steel would be sent across the North Sea for 12s or 1 5s a ton in future. Lighter goods would naturally pay more.
Mr. G. W. Hollwey's paper "Materials handling and the container revolution" was an eloquent plea for control of container movements by a single operator. After noting that a typical overseas consignment could pass through a minimum of 11 different hands before reaching its final destination, Mr. Nollway said: "In modern terms this division of responsibility is ridiculous. To be really efficient the man who presents the box at the factory must also operate the transport to the port, must effectively operate the port or the terminal within the port, must run the ship from this terminal to its sister terminal overseas, and must operate and control the last leg of the transportation through to the buyer. If he does not he cannot give a complete all-in door-to-door service, but, much more important, he cannot judge priorities both of service and cost at all stages of the through transportation and he cannot achieve the best possible compromise (because compromise there must be) between speed and cost".
Mr. Hollwey said the problem of handling cargo in and out of the container had been largely neglected. The clever transportation company operating a modern container service had now neatly transferred the responsibility of that "interesting but nevertheless troublesome" job back to the place it belonged—to the factory where the goods were produced.
He thought a lot of nonsense was talked about the need for supervision, education and control of the man who would now have the privilege of stevedoring cargo into containers at factories. No one was better qualified to pack cargo into boxes than the men who already handled it during the manufacturing process. Such people had been loading products on to vehicles for home distribution for years, and the vehicles, while different in shape from a container, complied with the same laws of acceleration, deceleration and gravity that would apply to containers moving across the road as in container vessels fitted with stabilizers.
But Mr. Hallway stressed that the methods used for loading flat-bed vehicles would not suffice for containers. Every traffic flow presented its own packing problems and solutions. Factory reception and distribution centres must be replanned with the container in mind and suitable mechanized equipment would be needed.