According to the BBC, At any given moment about 20% of all containers on the world’s seas are empty.
If this is correct, then this extreme economic imbalance offers some opportunities for rationalisation.
Today’s invention represents one of the simplest possible approaches.
Containers are stowed on deck and contribute significantly to the drag on ships and thus their running costs -even when empty. A small saving on fuel would be enormously valuable.
The smallest possible modification would be to equip containers with ends which both open.
This would allow containers to be on deck with their doors folded back and the airflow passing through the resulting corridors.
Although the drag would be cut by much less than 20%, it could still represent a very big saving.
Of course this design of container would also work well if being driven, empty, on the back of a truck.
seen this – http://lmgtfy.com/?q=folding+sea+container – ?
Ingenious. I can’t help thinking that 20% is a huge amount of empty metal on the move.
Cheers,
p