communicatively coupled 1102 with database 1100 note that database 1100 may be included in at least one member of a container inventory management collection comprising a marine shipping inventory management system and a rail yard inventory management system note that the system includes received optical characteristic 1100 and received positional identification 1150 in certain systems it is preferred that both received optical characteristic 1100 and received positional identification 1150 reside in memory 1020 however the system may include one or both of 1100 and 1150 residing somewhere other than memory 1020 including but not limited to them residing in network interface 1030 program system 1200 of fig4 a manages at least a container inventory using container code recognition of a container identified by a container code the container code recognition is performed on the container crane which may be either a transfer container crane 2100 or a quay container crane 2200 seen in fig3 the container inventory management includes the following receiving an optical characteristic of the container code and a positional identification of the container to create a received optical characteristic 1100 and a received positional identification 1150 updating a database with the received container code optical characteristic and the received container positional identification as used herein a computer will be considered to include at least one of the following an instruction processor an inferential processor a finite state.