Container ship

A container ship (also called boxship or spelled containership) is a cargo ship that carries all of its load in truck-size intermodal containers, in a technique called containerization. Container ships are a common means of commercial intermodal freight transport and now carry most seagoing non-bulk cargo. Container ship capacity is measured in twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU). Typical loads are a mix of 20-foot (1-TEU) and 40-foot (2-TEU) ISO-standard containers, with the latter predominant. Today, about 90% of non-bulk cargo worldwide is transported by container ships, the largest of which, from 2023 onward, can carry over 24,000 TEU. There are two main types of dry cargo: bulk cargo and break bulk cargo. Bulk cargoes, like grain or coal, are transported unpackaged in the hull of the ship, generally in large volume. Break-bulk cargoes, in contrast, are transported in packages, and are generally manufactured goods. Before the advent of containerization in the 1950s, break-bulk items required manual loading, lashing, unlashing and unloading from the ship one piece at a time. This stevedoring process became more efficient by grouping cargo into containers, 1,000 to 3,000 cubic feet (28 to 85 m) of cargo, or up to about 64,000 pounds (29,000 kg), is moved at once and each container is secured to the ship once in a standardized way.