If Malcom McLean was the father of containerization, then Keith Tantlinger, who died recently at the age of 92, was the father of the shipping container. Tantlinger’s container designs spurred the containerization revolution that forever changed both shipping and world trade.
The idea of “containerizing” cargo had been around for a long time but no one had made it work. Two innovations developed by Keith Tantlinger made containerization practical. He developed a container “corner casting” which is fitted on each of the four corners of the rectangular container. The corner casting has holes on the top and sides which allowes a twist lock, a mechanical fitting which locks into the corner casting, allowing containers to be stacked securely one on top of the other. The corner casting also provided a means for dockside gantry canes to lock onto containers to load or unload them from ships. Becausre the vertical loads were all transferred through the corning casting and corner pillars which support them, the container itself can be built light, allowing more cargo to be carried.
Tantlinger’s second innovation was commercial not technical. He convinced McLean to give away the patents for the container design, so that other ship operators could adopt the same designs. Standardizing the design of containers and the associated fittings and gear allowed the efficiencies of containerization to spread across the globe.
Shipping Container Inventor Transformed World Trade
Here is a short video of a gantry crane laoding containers onto a ship. The design of the container, the crane spreader that picks up the container and the related fittings were all originally designed by Tantlinger.