Containerized shipping began with N.C. man 50 years ago

Fifty years ago on April 26, a trucker from Maxton, N.C., ran an experiment here that forever altered international trade and the global economy. While many scoffed, Malcolm McLean hired a crane to hoist 58 trailer-sized steel cargo boxes onto a Texas-bound freighter. It was an alternative to the then-ubiquitous “break-bulk” shipping, the costly, pilferage-prone method dramatized in the film “On The Waterfront.”