Shipping Container Design for Intermodal Shipping The computer
was important to shipping container design even in the 1950s at
the beginning of the containerization revolution. In 1956 Matson
Navigation Company, a shipper who dominated traffic between the
west coast of the U.S. and Hawaii, used computers to analyze
thousands of shipments. Matson concluded that the 20-25 foot
container was optimal. Another important feature of shipping
container design were the heavy steel corner posts developed
specifically to support stacking. Matson’s freighters were
specifically designed to handle six high stacks of shipping
containers. Matson turned computer power to analyzing the design
of its cranes at Alameda and other ports and as a consequence
improved load times to 400 tons per hour, which was 40 times the
average manual load time from longshoremen. Cranes were
specifically designed to meet the task of unloading standardized
size containers loaded both in the holds and on the decks of
Matson freighters. The newly in