Marc Levinson > Quotes

“In 1961, before the container was in international use, ocean freight costs alone accounted for 12 percent of the value of U.S. exports and 10 percent of the value of U.S. imports.”
― Marc Levinson, The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger

“By far the biggest expense in this process was shifting the cargo from land transport to ship at the port of departure and moving it back to truck”
― Marc Levinson, The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger

“The container is at the core of a highly automated system for moving goods from anywhere, to anywhere, with a minimum of cost and complication on the way. The container made shipping cheap, and by doing so changed the shape of the world economy.”
― Marc Levinson

“certainly, no one in the early days of container shipping foresaw that this American-born industry would come to be dominated by European and Asian firms, as the U.S.-flag ship lines, burdened by a legacy of protected markets and heavy regulation, proved unable to compete in a fast-changing world.”
― Marc Levinson, The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger - Second Edition with a new chapter by the author

“The economic benefits arise not from innovation itself, but from the entrepreneurs who eventually discover ways to put innovations to practical use—and”
― Marc Levinson, The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger

“Conex boxes,” steel boxes 8½ feet deep and 6 feet 10½ inches high used for military families’ household goods.”
― Marc Levinson, The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger - Second Edition with a new chapter by the author

“DeLong pier,”
― Marc Levinson, The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger - Second Edition with a new chapter by the author

“McLean understood that transport companies’ true business was moving freight rather than operating ships or trains.”
― Marc Levinson, The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger - Second Edition with a new chapter by the author

“Competition is often conflated with capitalism, but they are not at all the same. Capitalism involves private ownership of the means of production and distribution, but the word implies nothing about the way in which privately owned firms do business. Capitalism is perfectly compatible with a society in which a powerful state doles out favors to private monopolies, protects some enterprises from others, or even sets the prices privately owned firms may charge for their products. Indeed, while capitalists tend to praise the virtues of competition, many of them would just as soon avoid it.”
― Marc Levinson, The Great A&P and the Struggle for Small Business in America

“Bull Insular Line,”
― Marc Levinson, The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger - Second Edition with a new chapter by the author

“the extremely sharp drop in freight costs played a major role in increasing”
― Marc Levinson, The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger - Second Edition with a new chapter by the author

“He responded with a tale about how, after spending hours in late 1937 queuing at a Jersey City pier to unload his truck, he realized that it would be quicker simply to hoist the entire truck body on board. From this incident, we are meant to believe, came his decision eighteen years later to buy a war-surplus tanker and equip it to carry 33-foot-long containers.”
― Marc Levinson, The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger - Second Edition with a new chapter by the author

“A grocer named Clarence Saunders had opened the country’s first self-service food store, Piggly Wiggly, in Memphis in 1916, but the concept had not spread widely by the early 1920s.”
― Marc Levinson, The Great A&P and the Struggle for Small Business in America

“Evergreen Marine. Evergreen, founded as a tramp company by the ambitious Taiwanese entrepreneur Chang Yung-fain 1968, had become a major operator across the Pacific and on the Far East–Europe route, undercutting conference freight rates to gain traffic. In May”
― Marc Levinson, The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger - Second Edition with a new chapter by the author

“British prime minister Harold Macmillan, confronted with yet another strike threat, opined in 1962, “The dockers are such difficult people, just the fathers and the sons, the uncles and nephews. So like the House of Lords, hereditary and no intelligence required.”
― Marc Levinson, The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger - Second Edition with a new chapter by the author

“Eric Hoffer,”
― Marc Levinson, The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger - Second Edition with a new chapter by the author

“By one estimate, each day seaborne goods spend under way raises the exporter’s costs by 0.8 percent, which means that a typical 13-day voyage from China to the United States has the same effect as a 10 percent tariff.”
― Marc Levinson, The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger - Second Edition with a new chapter by the author

“five-fon”
― Marc Levinson, The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger - Second Edition with a new chapter by the author

“Capital, labor, and land, the basic factors of production, have lost much of their fascination for those looking to understand why economies grow and prosper. The key question asked today is no longer how much capital and labor an economy can amass, but how innovation helps employ those resources more effectively to produce more goods and services.”
― Marc Levinson, The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger - Second Edition with a new chapter by the author

“A ship carrying 9,000 40-foot containers, filled with 200,000 tons of shoes and clothes and electronics, may make the three-week transit from Hong Kong through the Suez Canal to Germany with only twenty people on board.4”
― Marc Levinson, The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger - Second Edition with a new chapter by the author

“He was a restless soul, competitive, calculating, always thinking about business. 'He wouldn't be able to sit still five minutes,' a longtime colleague recalled before McLean's death. 'You'd either have to play gin rummy with him or discuss business with him.”
― Marc Levinson, The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger

“Walter Kidde & Co.”
― Marc Levinson, The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger - Second Edition with a new chapter by the author

“Never Steal Anything Small,”
― Marc Levinson, The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger - Second Edition with a new chapter by the author

“The average urban family spent fully one-third of its budget on food.8”
― Marc Levinson, The Great A&P and the Struggle for Small Business in America

“Stores offering credit typically charged higher prices to cover the inevitable credit losses, driving cash-paying customers to chain stores that offered no credit but lower prices.7”
― Marc Levinson, The Great A&P and the Struggle for Small Business in America

“The media have undertaken a similar reconsideration. Since the late 1980s, commentators have filled columns and airwaves with glib chatter about globalization, as if it were merely a matter of bits and bytes and corporate cost-cutting.”
― Marc Levinson, The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger - Second Edition with a new chapter by the author

“landlocked,”
― Marc Levinson, The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger - Second Edition with a new chapter by the author

“A well-drawn contract would typically include a provision stipulating the sales volume claimed by the seller and requiring the seller to work in the business for a specified amount of time. If the store did not achieve the sales the seller claimed it to have, the buyer could back out of the deal.”
― Marc Levinson, The Great A&P and the Struggle for Small Business in America

“First Colony Farms passed”
― Marc Levinson, The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger - Second Edition with a new chapter by the author

“Transportation has become so efficient that for many purposes, freight costs do not much affect economic decisions.”
― Marc Levinson, The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger - Second Edition with a new chapter by the author