Innovations in transportation: The Box

One reason why goods are much less expensive now:

“Freighters used to carry loose cargo in sacks and crates of various sizes, crammed into holds and piled on deck by stevedores. That began to change in 1956, when a Texas trucking magnate named Malcom McLean refitted an oil tanker with steel frames on its decks to stack shipping containers. Standardized containers—modular units of a uniform size that would be filled at the factory, loaded onto truck trailers or trains, then stacked by cranes on the ship—made shipping orders of magnitude more efficient. At the time, according to Levinson’s book [The Box], the cost of loading cargo onto a break-bulk freighter was $5.83 per ton; for McLean’s jerry-rigged container ship, the cost was 15.8¢. It was only a matter of time before container ships took over.” (Source)

Impressive: the Box lowered loading costs to 1/38th of what they were before.

(Thanks to S.P. for The Box.)