ON 26 APRIL 1956 the SS Ideal-X, a converted World War Two oil tanker, left Newark, New Jersey, bound for Houston, Texas, carrying 58 pre-packed ‘trailer vans’: corrugated steel boxes measuring 8ft by 8ft by 35ft and designed to fit on a flatbed truck.
As it departed, an official of the International Longshoremen’s Association was asked what he thought of the new innovation, and said: ‘I’d like to sink that son of a bitch!’ And he would not have been short of colleagues ready to
