Of the 17 million shipping containers that are used to transport goods around the world about 20% are empty. These big, empty boxes are not always where they will be reloaded for their next shipping assignment, so they are often being transported while they are empty. Another issue is that while they are empty and awaiting their next load of cargo, they take up huge amounts of storage space. These issues are being addressed by a new generation of container design that is emerging.

The standard shipping container is a large rigid box, usually made of steel, which makes them very bulky, awkward to handle, and heavy. The new class of shipping containers is made from lightweight, durable, modern materials, and they are engineered so they can be collapsed when they are not full of cargo. The traditional container is rather like your old Ford sedan- reliable, sturdy, and inefficiently slow. The new design is the Ferrari of the containerized shipping world, because when they are empty they can be collapsed and stacked onto trucks or train cars and moved in bulk to their next job. This means that the containers that you need will arrive sooner, and so they can be filled and dispatched more quickly as well.

On top of the improvements in the efficiency in handling, their lightweight construction makes them more efficient to transport as well. The Ferrini Corporation makes a collapsible container that is patented in the US, and claims that its 3 to 1 consolidation feature, allowing three collapsed containers to be loaded onto a single truck trailer, can reduce costs by as much as $265 per round trip, when repositioning your shipping containers. Their website estimates that $1.8 billion could be saved on fuel costs worldwide using this strategy alone.

These new containers often include modern technology designed to reduce the impact that containers are having on the environment in ways other than fuel reduction too. The Dutch company, Cargoshell, makes collapsible containers from composite materials that have floatation airbags and GPS, so that they will float until they can be recovered. The composite materials also allow tracking transmitters to be placed inside the containers which make tracking their movements easy. They are also corrosion resistant, don’t need to be painted and the manufacturing process produces significantly less carbon emissions than is used to construct steel containers. Unlike Ferraris though, these new containers are priced competitively so that even if you only have the budget to run a Ford you can still enjoy premium performance.