The Invisible Fleet that Handles Ninety Percent of Everything

Posted : 11/28/13 4:02 AM

The release of the latest book by British author and journalist Rose George, Ninety Percent of Everything, has put the spotlight on an aspect of consumer society that is usually thought about very little. George spent several weeks aboard one of the 100,000 container ships that ply the world’s seaways, and her insights have brought home just how reliant we all are on this vital, but often invisible, fleet that handles 90% of all of the commodities that we all use daily.Her research turned up some very interesting facts about the intermodal shipping network generally. Perhaps the most significant thing that comes to light is that, with 20 million containers in transit at any one time, it is physically impossible to inspect them all and only around 10% of containerized freight is ever inspected by customs. The reason for this and for the invisibility of this fleet generally, is the huge ships that are now used to transport the world’s containerized goods. This has reduced the number of people that choose to go to sea, simply because the demand is not there with the new E Class super ships carrying 18,000 units and requiring a crew of only 13. This, and the development of efficient intermodal port facilities, has increased the speed at which cargo can be handled and transported so much that to carry out full inspections would slow the intermodal network down to a crawl.Because this traffic in cargo happens far out to sea, away from our everyday lives, we don’t think of how many things come to us all from across the globe, until we look at a label to see where something has come from. Even then, the invisible fleet isn’t usually directly connected with the object in the consumer’s mind. Even further from the consumer’s thoughts are the vast majority of containers that come and go from every port every day that no one can say for sure what they are carrying. Relying on the declarations of what they are “said to contain,” these ubiquitous boxes may be carrying everything from counterfeit goods or arms to people. For the most part, they are carrying all of the consumer goods that we use and fill our homes with, as well as many of the things that we have come to take for granted about everyday life in the 21st century. One interesting fact from the book is that 796 million bananas can be shipped on one medium sized container ship and arrive in perfect condition.