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Heroes of Progress: Malcom McLean
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Malcolm McLean
McLean, first an American truck driver and later a businessman, developed the modern intermodal shipping container.
The development of standardized shipping containers significantly reduced the cost of transporting cargo across the world.
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Malcom McLean's life
- Malcolm McLean was born in November 1913 in Maxton, North Carolina.
- He graduated from high school in 1935 and began working as a driver for his sibling's trucking company.
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Malcom McLean solves a problem
- In 1937, during a routine delivery to the port in North Carolina for shipment, McLean had to stay behind until his cargo had been loaded onto the ship.
- He sat for hours watching dozens of hands load thousands of packages onto the ship. It was a diverse assortment of barrels, boxes, bags, crates, and drums. (A typical ship contained as many as 200,000 individual pieces of cargo and the time it took to load and unload the cargo often equaled the time that the vessel needed to sail between ports.)
- He realized the waste of time and money and wondered about a better alternative.
- He initially thought to load entire trucks onboard a ship but realized that it would waste cargo space.
- He modified his idea, so only the containers were loaded onto the ship, not the trucks' chassis. The containers were also designed to stack on top of one another.
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Developing an idea
- In 1956, Malcom McLean secured a bank loan for $22 million. He bought two WWII tanker ships and converted them to carry his containers. Later that year, one of his ships was loaded with 58 containers and sailed from New Jersey to Houston.
- Mclean could offer transport prices that were 25% lower than his competitor. He could also lock the containers to prevent cargo theft.
As the advantage of MacLean's container system became apparent, bigger ships, more sophisticated containers, and larger cranes to load cargo were developed.
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Key Ideas
Taking Smart Notes
When we take notes, it should not become a stack of forgotten thoughts. Our notes should be a rich and interconnected collection of ideas we can draw on regardless of where our interests lead us.
Luhmann's slip-box
German sociologist Niklas Luhmann (1927-1998) designed his slip-box made up of index cards. They were thematically unlimited. His simple system produced a prolific output. Over his 30-year career, Luhmann published 58 books and hundreds of articles while completing his two-volume masterwork, The Society of Society (1997). He regularly pointed to his slip-box as the source for his fantastic productivity.
How Luhmann's slip-box worked
- He wrote down any interesting or potentially useful ideas on uniformly sized index cards on one side only.
- Each new index card got a sequential number, starting at 1.
- When a new source was added to that topic or something to supplement it, he would add new index cards with letters added to the number (1a, 1b, 1c, etc.)
- These branching connections were marked in red as close as possible, where the branch began.
- Any of these branches could also have their own branches. (For example 21/3d26g53)
- As he read, he would create new cards, update or add comments to existing ones, create new branches from existing cards, or create new links between cards.