Idea of containers in 1944

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32802, 30 December 1971, Page 1

Idea of containers in 1944

Containers for shipping cargo are now regarded as one of- the latest and biggest developments in the transport industry but when a Christchurch engineer suggested them to transport interests 24 years ago, his idea was rejected because It was felt it would be too hard to get enough people interested in them. The man who is in the position of being able to say “I told you so” is Mr W. R. Fumiss, a retired engineer who now lives in Auckland. Mr Fumiss, who is 90, had the idea of container shipping in 1944 when he was watching railway workers load packages from a waggon to. a truck.

The packages were being moved one at a time—and he suddenly thought, how much quicker and more efficient the whole operation would be if all the packages were in one large container; which could be lifted from waggon to truck by a crane. After returning to his home at Redcliffs, Mr Fumiss continued to think about his idea. He put it to the Canterbury Chamber of Commerce, which some time later asked him to put his suggestions in writing. Mr Fumiss still has a copy of the letter he wrote to the chamber in December, 1946. In it he said that “. ‘containers’—l use the word in the meantime till I find a more suitable one”—could save time and labour, and could be of such a size , that they could easily be lowered into a ship’s hold, filled with

goods, then placed in a railway waggon. “As soon as the waggon landed in the goods shed, the containers could' be taken off with a crane, leaving the waggon ready to go into immediate use.”

Containers, he wrote, if filled with goods destined for the one warehouse, could also be loaded directly bn to a carrier’s truck, for unpacking at the warehouse. "The possibility of the idea goes even further. Say, a manufacturer in Auckland had goods for Christchurch, he could apply for the required number of containers, fill them at his factory, and the goods need not be manhandled again until they are landed (still in the containers) in the warehouse in Christchurch.” The Canterbury Chamber of Commerce was sufficiently

impressed by Mr Fumiss’s idea to pass it on to the Associated Chambers of Commerce and to the Manufacturers’ Association. In February, 1947, a meeting gave further consideration to the suggestion. Contemporary newspaper reports say that one speaker, ". . . Mr D. S. Dott, said that containers could be used under a group system with consignors sharing the space. However, there might be objections, and it might not suit all businesses, and should be thoroughly investigated.” The meeting eventually decided to call a meeting of the national organisations likely to be interested in the idea. This meeting was eventually held in July, 1947—but resolved that it would be too difficult to get enough people interested in the idea of containers.