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Container shipping transformed global trade by standardizing cargo into uniform steel boxes that can move seamlessly between ships, trains, and trucks without repacking. Before containerization, loading a ship could take days of manual labor, with dockworkers handling loose crates, barrels, and sacks individually. The standardized container, widely adopted from the 1960s onward, cut port turnaround times dramatically and reduced cargo theft and damage, since goods stayed sealed inside a single box throughout the journey. This efficiency lowered shipping costs so significantly that it reshaped manufacturing itself, encouraging companies to locate factories wherever labor was cheapest rather than near their end markets. Critics note that containerization also displaced large numbers of dockworkers, whose manual loading skills became largely obsolete within a generation.