How to Use Shipping Lines?

Answer 1

For hundreds of years, the flow of goods across oceans has been a lifeline between nations, moving raw materials and finished product alike to waiting markets, spreading prosperity and raising living standards everywhere. For a long time, shipping lines depended on wind power, which was weather-dependent and difficult to predict.

This changed with the invention of the steam engine. The first steamship was built in 1783, and this made large-scale shipping possible. In 1819 the first transatlantic steamship crossing was made, and by the 1830s three shipping lines began operating in Great Britain, connecting it with the vast British empire. From then on, the old sailing ships were gradually retired.

In the mid twentieth century the diesel powered ship appeared, and the steamship headed into history. In recent years the containership has become dominant among shipping lines. Today they carry most non-bulk cargo. The first container ships were converted world war two tankers. In 1951 the first new container ship entered service. The following year the US Military began using them. They are designed to carry standard sized containers that can be loaded on trucks, and driven from the dock directly to a customer.

The larger ones carry their own cranes for self-unloading. In 1955 the first intermodal service began, when a ship carrying 600 sealed containers departed Vancouver, Canada to Skagway, Alaska, where they were loaded on railroad cars heading north to the Yukon. Intermodal containerization has made international ship-truck-rail movements a lot easier, and is the common shipping method today.

Now anyone can call a worldwide shipping company, and have all their belongings, including their automobile, placed in a sealed container, which is loaded to a truck or train and taken to the nearest port, then loaded aboard a ship and sent overseas to their new home, with the process being reversed at the destination. This has made international relocation a lot easier. Manufacturers shipping their vehicles overseas also use containers.