Logistique Et Ses Monstres - Logistics and Its Monsters

Once again, it could all have started on the high seas. The history of capitalism is made and unmade by the conquests of the seas. Just as the birth of the great industrial cycle was made possible by ships laden with sugar and cotton, heavy with the labour of the slaves who amassed them, so the giants of the seas laden with containers are beginning something of a new cycle: not so much a general upheaval of the world's economies, but much more a managerial or technical transformation. The logistics revolution began with the invention of a big box in which to store goods. The container, which can be handled with a minimum of manpower, transported from quay to ship and then from ship to lorry without unloading any of the goods it contains, thus resolving the twofold constraint of breaking loads and the immense nuisance caused by port handling and its tumultuous dockers.