According to Container Tech a 40ft standard shipping container can have a max gross (container + contents) weight of 67,200 lb (or 30481.407 kg or 33.6 tons or an Adult North Pacific Right Whale).  So, what is the quickest, easiest, safest and most energy efficient way to move such containers?  According to current tech in the container moving industry it seems to be cranes.  Big companies like http://www.kalmarglobal.com/ have been spending a lot of money automating and creating cranes.  Is that really the best solution?

With current crane tech a human on average can unload 30 containers per hour or one every two minutes.  Would massive conveyor belts work?  Probably not.  How about EM crane.  Most likely we don’t want any magnets or electro magnets anywhere neat the cargo.

So, what then?

The fastest way would be to augment the ship and the port.  The ship would be modular, allowing the cargo to be disconnected from the rest of the ship.  Essentially becoming either one or multiple massive barges.  Previously loaded “barges” would then be able to take their places and the ship would be able to proceed to its next destination.  With this style of port you would be able to leave the massive ships out further at sea and then push/pull the barges using tugboats.  Actually, the port could be adhoc, since the barges could lock together.  This would seem to be very efficient…  Main problem is designing a ship to be able to do such a thing in the ocean seems like a massive engineering problem.  Then the next big problem is getting ports and shipping companies to convert to such a system.  Buy/building a ship is an enormous cost.  Actually the boat wouldn’t be that difficult I don’t think to build.  The back end would house the engine, quarters, etc.  The front would be built of connected (possibly stacked) barges.  The main issue would be to not tip over when all of the barges have disconnected…  But I think that as long as the remaining part of the ship is big enough everything should work.  Then it is also relatively easy to attach the new cargo.  So, I think the main issue then is really the fact that it is a totally different way to do shipping, so that would mean a lot of expenses.  The cool part is the size of the ship can now be as big as you want since you don’t have to worry about ports.  The main thing is you have be small enough to get through the Suez Canal.  KalmarGlobal actually states in their vision of next gen ships that they will do this sort of thing…  So, why aren’t we seeing small scale versions of this already?  Money.

http://qz.com/477421/in-the-future-huge-ships-will-be-wind-powered-like-sailboats/ — (edit august 16 2015) qz did an article on the future of huge ships.  they predict that they will be like sail boats.

*stevedoring – to load or unload the cargo of (a ship).