The Giant Cranes and Robots That Keep Civilisation Running
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- Опубліковано 12 лип 2015
- With many, many thanks to all the team at DP World London Gateway www.dpworld.com/London-gateway ! This isn't a sponsored video: they just went above and beyond to make sure this looked good, and I'm so grateful to them.
On main camera was Matt Gray (mattg.co.uk - / unnamedculprit ) - you can see the full timelapses, in 1440p50, over at his channel: • Container Port Timelap...
This was co-written with Dan Williams (iamdanw.com - / iamdanw ) - if you want more detail about how all this works, you can see his half-hour talk at • Cambridge Internet of ... or read his "Postcards from a Supply Chain" at www.iamdanw.com/postcards/
And of course, I'm at tomscott.com/ and / tomscott
I love how people used to explain the internet in terms of real world objects, and now you're explaining something in the real world in terms of the internet...
Fleak We've come full circle, I guess.
Fleak This is precisely the comment I was just about to make myself :D
The wierd thing is, that the internet does not quite work this way. It uses variable sized packages/packets. There was technology that basically lost the VHS/Betamax battle, called ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) that lost the battle to Ethernet, which did use fixed sized containers for data.
The internet we would have had would be far better, less latency, easy mix of voice and data, easy streaming. Oh well
I was also about to make the same comment.
It's like a series of tubes.
@Tom Scott, as a proffesional sailor, I have to correct you, the content of each box is known to the crew. every box has a shipping manifest, telling what is in it and how much of it is in there.
if there is no paperwork (or digital paperwork) the box does not go on the ship.
If there is doubt about the content the crew is allowed to open the box and inspect, even if there is a seal on it.
the big problem with shipping in boxes is that 40% of the boxes aren't the weight the paperwork claims them to be, most are overweight, and that is a huge danger to ships.
Many of these are loaded without note, with the software automatically sorting where it should go. Yes the paperwork is there to be read, but i doubt the non-hazardous cargo is overlooked. A ship like the Triple E class would not have a poor guy sitting and reading the manifests.
@@uku4171 m e
It's just the higher ranks on the ship eg captain, that know accurately what is being shipped
I’m no expert but can’t they just entice the seal off with some fish?
Why don’t they just weigh the Containers using the cranes?
1100 containers in 12 hours = ~1.5 containers a minute. Pretty impressive.
Spread across 6 cranes. Is 16 moves per hour. Other ports can do 25 per hour.
Benjamin Harvey That kind of volume is amazing
TheRealHughJeffner .... we do 35-50 an hour per crane in Los Angeles / Long Beach California..... with labor not automation.
Don't you guys haul empties out using the stackers, 2 at a time?
No.... 1 Can per beam and 1 can per chassis/bombcart unless we are loading/unloading 20 fters they can be loaded 2 to a bombcart.
Fun fact about shipping containers: they're so efficient, that docker unions in the US tried to block them. Carriers are required to pay "container royalties" to sustain the declining docker workforce.
I was in the merchant navy and when Tom Scott mentioned about ' broken bottles of whisky' it brought back a few memories , used to be one of the perks
"Our civilisation really does hold together because of these metal boxes and giant cranes"
2020/21 shipping industry: *sobbing uncontrollably*
The Evergiven sends its regards to the world
When this video came out, who knew it was actually foreshadowing the greatest traffic jam of all time?
*Suez Canal has entered the chat*
Not a surprise to a lot of people. Just people cared more about profit today than reliable profit tomorrow @@kentslocum
As someone working in logistics I cannot thanks you enough for introducing your audience to the beauty of my job: efficiency through standardization!
Next step could be the europallet,but it is not nearly as spectacular.
Someone needs to make an Indie game on managing a container port.
6 years later, but I second this
@@oliviavazquezrojas7208 6 days later, I third this
@@jacextreme6432 Another 6 days later, I fourth this
6 years later, i fifth this
@@thegreatmindgorb8948 7 days later...dang it...
The most fascinating use of cargo containers is as homes. They're strong, they're built to exacting specifications, and they can only be used for so long by regulation despite all the weather-proofing done to them. So you can get a few used containers for cheap (around $1200 USD for the half-sized one, and $3000 for the full-sized), put them together and create an inexpensive home. They're even big enough that you can create a single-occupancy flat out of one cargo container, which is exactly what a few universities have done to create cheap student housing.
Lutranereis I saw some TV show where a guy built a multistory house out of shipping containers. It was very cool.
***** Yup, and building shipping container homes can be incredibly eco-friendly, too. You're recycling a container for the structure of the home, and then you can choose to use renewable materials for the interior because you're saving so much money on the structure.
From there, you just need energy star appliances, a few solar panels, efficient HVAC and you're good to go.
Lutranereis The most mind blowing thing for me about container homes is that when you need to move, you just order a couple of trucks (or one, if you have single-container flat) and bam, a few weeks later your whole house is on the other side of the world.
Lutranereis The land though...
+Lutranereis yep, and that would be hell of a sturdy home, as a container will gladly take all sorts of abuse - they are metal, they are built for pretty harsh conditions and long use there.
There's also design: they are basically standardized blocks, so hell, you can play Tetris with them all you like, and it's easy to build pretty amazing structures with them.
On a slightly more sinister note, it's these very shipping containers that are responsible for the de-industrialisation of Britain. By vastly improving the efficiency of shipping, it suddenly became so much cheaper to transport goods from around the world than it was to just make them here. It's those things that led to the closure of mills, mines and factories up and down the UK.
Of course, the fact that UK manufacturing was largely terrible has something to do with it as well. But the shipping container certainly played its part.
teehee1604 [copied response to another comment]
It's true that automation poses a problem, but the solution is not to stop automation but to let people benefit from the increased efficiency,
e.g. by reducing work hours while keeping the salary the same. In other words: Increased efficiency is great, it's the surrounding system that is flawed.
teehee1604 Believe it or not the UK manufacturers and ships out quite a substantial amount of stuff. We manufacture a lot of bespoke items, heavy equipment, trains, satellites, cars and car components, medications, gas turbines ect ect. We make less sure, but we still make plenty, it's just no longer dirty industry either.
teehee1604 Evolve or die, sadly.
teehee1604 Not the shipping container, but free trade.... free trade favors whoever can manufacture at the lowest cost/unit.
well not so sinister when you realise the working conditions in these factories and mines was horrible rather be working down at the docks then slowly killing my lungs in a coal mine
Thanks for posting this! I used to live in Hamburg which boasts one of the largest harbors in the world and have always wondered about the containers. Also, thank you for captioning this video and for making it accessible to all. I really deeply appreciate it and wish that more you tube creators would caption theirs too.
So, humanity, like cats, loves boxes. This is important information.
(Seriously, interesting video)
I want to be a giant crane when I grow up.
Follow your dreams!
Wyvrn I sexually identify as a giant crane....
Sorry, you can eat 5 dozen eggs and ve a barge.
You could make an argument that the intermodal shipping container was the single most significant invention of the 20th century. It made moving stuff around the world so easily it led to the outsourcing of western manufacturing to Asia and paved the way for globalisation. I doubt any of us would be watching this video if it wasn't for the shipping container because I don't think the devices we watch on (laptops, tablets, smartphones) would have been able to have been commoditized, Tom wouldn't have an audience and Google probably wouldn't have a business model.
Canary Wharf and London's financial sector did quite well out of all this too.
Shipping containers decriminalised dock work and the supply chain. The stikers could no longer no longer supply themselves with luxury and brown goods. Goodbye to the union mafia.
The guy who almost made it halfway round the world in a container - what prevented him from making it?
ItsFozzy You'd probably have to Google it but if I remember right, someone happened to discover he was there which is what stopped him. And I think it was more a crate than those big metal containers.
ItsFozzy Have a look for "Container Bob" online. (Also, read "Why Is This Cargo Container Emitting So Much Radiation?", which is another fantastic story about a mystery container!)
***** en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_Bob
So basically all you need to do is to better insulate your container against noises. Or maybe people already did that and nobody ever found out.
Penny Lane Wow, kind of depressing how everyone was like "OMG OMG OMG TERRORIST"
Shaun Dreclin Yea it is not like the guy was carrying a bomb.
Tom, you're too late. I already know all about these. I played GTAV.
l2ic3 But you might not know :v
Bryan Grünauer Chagas I see what you did there xD
okay thank you all that's plenty of upvotes. i dont even like this comment anymore.
l2ic3 You can unfollow the comment :)
l2ic3 I posted a poor joke on a video a year ago and its still getting likes... get used to it. :-P
Hey Tom, how do you get these interviews? What kinds of connections do you have and how did you get them? What do you tell them that gets you in? Thanks, your work is amazing.
Seeing a "Hamburg Süd" container (or ship) anywhere on the planet gives me a warm feeling. It's like a link home.
The idea behind the standardised shipping container, is the same idea that goes into a piece of software called Docker
In essence rather than having to make sure your local software and the software on the server you need to use are the same and/or up to date. You just "ship" a standardised "container" containing all the necessary stuff to make everything work, which can potentially make everything easier for people who deal with distributing software to servers
Nikolaj Lepka except... no?
Lars Bo Rasmussen except no what?
Hay I pulled TGHU 162929 5 over here in the states it's nice to know that it gets around
You said "World trade relies on this network of physical things just as much as it does the internet", when the internet actually relies on these shipping containers too. The parts (routers, switches copper cables, fibre cables, etc.) all need to get shipped somewhere too.
It's mind blowing how much we rely on them This video has kind blown my mind. I love it!!!
So these giant cranes are making sure I can attack Ghandi while playing Civ?
dat nukemaster Gandhi doe
I don't know how you do it, but you keep showing amazing things.
Who downvoted this? Are there conspiracy theorists who think shipping is fake?
There will be one.
tHATS RigGHT RADI0 WAVES BeemED STR8 inTO YOUR BRrain
Ethan P.
"it's all fake! there is no way a piece of metal could float! All our goods are actually being beamed around by aliens and the harbors are just for show that we don't catch on to the government's agreement with the aliens!"
I would like to see one of them debate with a flat-earther while eating popcorn.
Kaleb Bruwer Yes! I see now, you can only make boats out of wood! And you can't carry more than a few people!
Yeah.
They think that sans x toriel was started by lizard people.
OK, I am a Brit living in Dubai, and after seeing all of those DP World logos (The "D" standing for "Dubai") I thought that you should really come out here. The city sprawled out from nowhere, 50 years ago technically the country its in didn't even exist and originally all of its money came from pearl divers. Now we have the world's largest/tallest/biggest/etc. everything. The desert is something tourists barely go see anymore in comparison to 10 years ago. Seriously, you'd enjoy it.
Not to mention all those lovely reallife flashbacks to good ol' slavery times, when you look at the people constructing those "World's *****st buildings". :)
shhhhhhh...we dont mention that out of fear
Dubai is a disgusting shithole. No one should go there.
At my middle school, this was used as a garbage storage or something, and since it was middle school we all giggled and pointed at 33.2 CU.M. I am no longer proud that I started it.
at our school was used as storage for random PE equipment hurdles etc
WHAT'S IN THE BOX?!?!?!?
***** Pfft- Somebody has noticed it as well lol
jesusnthedaisychain Your wife's head.
***** Cubic Meters
Falcondances This kills the American.
jesusnthedaisychain Cut a hole in the box
That is one of the best videos of yours that I have seen. The concept was great, explaining those containers was such a good idea. What great footage there is as well. Those shots of those giant cranes were truly excellent.
This was an amazing video, Tom. Please do more like this! It was so cool to see how it all works.
Fun Fact: The numbers over Toms shoulder at the beginning (around 00:24) are to load capacities for that specific container. The 'TARE WT' is the empty weight of the container itself, 2,200kg or 4,850lbs. In the 33.2 cubic meters, or 1,173 cubic feet volume of the interior, they can pack up to 28,280kg or 62,350lbs of goods for a total weight of goods plus container of 30,480kg or 67,200lbs. And the ships can move THOUSANDS of them.
Thats what industrial shipping keeping a country running looks like, from the pumps that keep your sewage from backing up into your shower, to the goods you ordered on some chinese drop shipment site, to well...whatever they can fit inside one of those containers.
You know. I knew this, yet still find it amazing every time someone brings it up. It's so simple yet so powerful!
Also, please, more information on that guy that shipped himself! :D
I've never realized how important those containers are. That was kind oo a big revelation for me
Thumbs up for putting "Things You Might Not Know" instead of just presuming our ignorance with a clickbait title. Thanks, Tom. You are awesome.
The analogy to internet routing is interesting. Standardizing it allows you to fire & forget. You're not at all concerned with the path it needs to take; you just drop it off at a port and it reaches its destination because every point along the way accepts the same standardized container and treats them all identically.
having this recommended to me right now feels like a really bad joke
This is better than most TED-talks! Thank you for making and sharing this!
Outstanding talk and excellent film - really good.
Thank goodness for Malcolm P. McLean and his vision to change the shipping world.
In 1956 Malcom changed the shipping world forever with his 1st ship carried 58 35-feet containers, along with a regular load of 15,000 tons of bulk petroleum from Newark to Houston in April 26, 1956.
I live in Singapore and my father works at one of these ports. I didn't know the significance of his work and these cranes but now I do. Thanks for the great video, Scott :)
1:24
"So that's all automatic?"
"Is that all Automatic?"
Thanks for great, eye opening videos Tom! Keep it up!
your youtube channel is amazing and i appreciate your content
Damn Tom... Your content is just so good at the moment, Highest quality in youtube.
Thank you for turning another thing I couldn't have cared less about into something that blows my mind.
That was excellent, thanks Tom - really put the standard in perspective, that network-packet analogy.
Any way you could extend the analogy the other way, to explain internet things (SSH, VPNs etc) through the analogy of shipping containers?
The Romans attempted to do something similar to this, albeit with small bulk items like grain or olives or liquid items like oil (and of course with much less technology and...fast ocean liners), by using amphorae. Special trade amphorae with pointy bottoms that you could hold in a wooden rack or stab in the sand so they could stand upright. Sometimes they reused them but often they were just broken and dumped in huge piles of pottery sherds near the coast.
Respect the seamen and dockers!
I'm glad GTA V had some missions dedicated to this kind of stuff, it's another thing about everyday life that's not really known by many
This video was way more interesting than i expected!
Tom, I love the analogies you made with Internet technologies. Very clever.
Three videos were all it took. Subscribed
you must have a great life, always traveling and seeing amazing things
I never even considerd how important it would be to standardize shipping/transportation of goods, but now I can't see a world that's as globalized as it is today without it. Very interesting!
Those fully automatic cranes are actually made in Shanghai. They are going to power the Terminal 4 of Yanshan which is part of the largest port of the world, Port of Shanghai, where htey are made.
This one was great. More of this kind of investigating facilities, please.
Also has anyone ever told you that you both look and sound like Chris Lintott from The Sky at Night?
I wonder why the person who tried to send himself failed...
Fascinating and informative video, thank you :)
These boxes have changed the world,for the better, I think. I office out of an 8x20', with half storage, on a construction jobsite, everyday, sort of like a 8x10 cell, even have bars on the window, but thank god for the AC here in Texas.
Having lived my entire life in the biggest container port in Scandinavia I see these things all the time. They're almost a part of my life even though I'm not involved in the industry.
I love how it still says Shang Hai (in characters, see 3:34 ) on the side of the cranes despite being based in Essex.
I didn't realize all that went into the design of these and how it impacts our lives.
The really crazy thing is how long it took for shipping containers to happen. It's such a simple, and in retrospect obvious innovation: put things in the same size boxes. And even before automated loading technology, it increased efficiency by several orders of magnitude. But it took centuries to figure this out.
i just realized how ridiculous it is that its easier to understand this physical idea as "internet" rather than vice versa
Really interesting and useful. Thanks!
If only more things were standardized like this, the world would be so much more efficient
ever heard of germany and scandinavia?
Somehow this video is released 5 years ago, yet I haven't seen this beforr
I'd love to know more about how (the software) operates precisely in the wind (or adverse conditions)
verry interested in how that exactly works as well. i am a student i embedded software development, so i program thes kind of things. butpeobablt sensors and calculations that can handle all diffrent kind of situations. those statemachine diagrams must be huge
+evi v I am very late to reply, but it uses a thing called STRIPS to operate. It is cool stuff.
cool, I'll look it up
There's a significant part of the novel "For the Win" by Cory Doctorow involving a character shipping himself from I believe LA to Guangzhou in a specially modified shipping container
Impressive presentation of this sort of "Internet" of Things ;) Seriously, cool video.
nice video. where do the security checks happen to monitor the contents? what stops people shipping themselves like you mentioned?
Those shuttle things looking like something straight out of Star Wars.
Going across the world in a shipping container. That sounds kinda fun. Haha. It might be slower then say train, and defiantly then a plane, but it would be a useful service. Especially if you travel a lot, you basically get a container, make it into a portable home contained within there. You can have it ( and you ) shipped. Not only that, but you could use it as a mobile-home too, put it on the back of a trailer, and boom, your home is now being transported. Sounds awesome to me, and if who knows, if you can do everything fast enough, maybe it could be a mode of transport :P
so if the ships taking these containers were stopped because of an accident in a certain egyptian canal then...
I was getting moist when I skimmed that title.
"Giants... Robots... Civilisation Running".
My body was ready.
Ehhh, not a bad alternative to the end of the world.
I live in a major port city so I've seen these everywhere but I never really knew how they got them everywhere.
"Our civilization relies on these."
**Points to his nuts**
+McLogarithmic ugh
Well i mean yeah
Civilisation*
Jake Kennedy
Not everybody uses British English, dumbass.
@@user-xq3gg9kd5d well then its their fault for using the wrong type of english
at 0:25, those workmen (Dockers) you mention all went on huge strikes and even riots in the UK when shipping containers were brought in. I normally wouldn't bother stating facts like that but in this instance its of a big more Sundance to me, as my grandfather was one of the people interviewed for television during the riots. he worked as one of the managers at the docks (I think) and had the nickname "death ray", as if he was around someone was getting fired...
Fascinating!
I think I already heard about shipping container during Hello Internet and you are talking about it? What is this, Shipping Week (not what you are thinking of?)
This is why there was so much disruption when in America the shipping ports went on strike.
As a testament ot how standard these containers are, it is interesting to note that where I live, they are referred to as,"seacans", i.e., " cans of the sea".
THIS is what this channel is all about. Containers. In fact, each video is a container too.
we're all containers if you think about it
The biggest version of the Command Pattern you'll find out there properly, tousands of objects all managed by a simple, yet powerful interface.
So the world can agree on huge standardised shipping containers that fits different modes of transportation but Heinz still can’t design baked bean tins that stack on one another.
I LOVE the analogy to the internet. Really easy to appreciate this system
That Captain in Dan Williams' postcards, isn't he the same guy that had Michael Palin on board for his 80 days around the world trip? It was a Maersk ship, as far as I remember, and his wife was called Helen, too.
I like the credits at the end =) Classy
Thank you for showing me how all the gibberish I order online get here :D It is astonishing
I once heard that the container system is so efficient that you spend more in petrol (gas if you are USA) to drive home from the shop with a new plasma television than it cost to ship it to the shop from, say, Asia.
12 hours wow, LAs port has from what I heard around a 27 hour turnaround
British efficiency at its finest.
What if you could just slide the deck of the ship off to the side with all the containers on it? Then it could be moved to a holding area where it would loaded/unloaded, but the ship wouldn't have to wait on it. There are definitely some engineering hurdles to get around, but I think it could lead to a much more efficient system.
Cosmin is really eloquent and very fun.
Do a video on how the swing of the cable is accounted for in the pick and place operations of that crane.... I really want to know how that works...
Which crane are you referring to? The ship to shore crane or the straddle carrier?.
The smaller straddle carriers will have their ropes reeved in such a way as to reduce sway, and may also have a mechanical antis way system using hydraulics in a push me pull me configuration.
The ship to shore cranes rely largely on driver skill. However there are anti sway systems and active skew that use a camera on the trolley and a crosshair on the head block. This is then tracked pixel by pixel by a piece of software which then feeds movement information into the cranes plc and on to the motor drives.
At Felixstowe we have a semi auto system that once the container has been lifted a set height from the ship will then move the box, missing all the boxes stacked on the ship and bring it to within a few meters of the trailer ready for the crane driver to land it.
Yeah, the big one... That's pretty awesome, thanks for sharing!
Kevin Klika I'm sure it involves the same kind of calculations for a pendulum, its period depends on its length. If you know how far it will swing given a certain initial speed from the bottom, then you stop that far ahead of the target, let it swing that far, then reciprocate the pendulum motion from the top, then come to a stop directly over it. making the container move vertically down to rest at its final location. Try it with a yoyo.
Although, after thinking about it some more, a better way would just be to accelerate so that the cable maintains a certain angle, then around the midpoint of transit stop accelerating and maintain a constant speed so that the pendulum swings ahead of the trolley, then decelerate to maintain the opposing angle until coming to a full stop smoothly over the target.
Back of the napkin engineering there.
Very interesting video.
Felt like I was 12 again watching Blue Peter! lol this is great!
This is really cool! But, if the shipping is so computerized, how are customs and other regulations enforced?
Most transported item in the world? the answer is air around 70% :). Keep the videos coming they are great
@0:30 South Australia, Adelaide shoutout !!
My explorer vessel can carry 12T of cargo in Elite Dangerous. That's not very much, but sometimes I just take small cargo missions, not caring what I'm transporting. Even in the future, I think such a system like this will still be in place.
Can anyone tell me what's the white structure with "DP World" written on it at the top of the loading cranes? I've looked at those for years wondering what's inside.
During covid, this video hits differently