Unloading a Container Ship

We usually write about shipping containers, their uses, and the different locations you can find them in, places like depots, ports, local dealers, etc., but we don't often discuss how they get there. The shipping container that you've bought and have sitting on your property, or the unit that you drive passed on a regular basis has lived a pretty interesting life.

A few weeks ago we were able to take a tour of the Port of Los Angeles and learn a little more about how shipping containers pass from the vessel to the depot. We know that 95-98% of standard shipping containers are manufactured in China, and after leaving China they are transported to different ports all around the world. The containers that end up at the Port of Los Angeles are unloaded in the process seen in this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ou8EocWD99o

Each year the Port of Los Angeles handles around 7.8 million TEUs (twenty foot equivalent units. 1x 20' = 1 TEU, 1x 40' = 2 TEUs), and these containers, along with other containers from Long Beach, Oakland, Portland, and Seattle, make their way through the unloading process, depot storage, and possibly transportation inland as far as Salt Lake City, Utah and Denver, Colorado. Once retired from shipping the containers are sold and repurposed as storage units, modular housing, or just about any other creative purpose you can think of.

The next time you see a shipping container, no matter if it came through Los Angeles, Miami, or New York, it probably landed on United States soil in the same way as these containers coming off the Yang Ming container ship.