Truck Driver to Billionaire

The man who revolutionized the world wasn't Bezos, or Gates, but a truck driver names Malcolm McLean!

Picture this: On Thanksgiving Day, McLean's truck idled for a staggering 8 hours, waiting for cargo to be unloaded. It was during this seemingly mundane wait that a groundbreaking idea struck him—what if the entire trailer could be removed from the truck instead of the conventional, time-consuming unloading and reloading process?

His brainchild? The shipping container vessel!

McLean, a native of North Carolina, had been involved in the trucking business for two years, he acquired a truck through a time-payment plan and, in collaboration with his brother Jim and sister Clara, embarked on establishing a trucking company.

In 1937, when, observing the unloading of his truck and the slow loading of the ship, McLean envisioned a future where an entire truck trailer could be effortlessly lifted onto the ship's deck in one seamless motion. However, it would take nearly two decades for this dream to materialize.

Demonstrating his innovative spirit in the trucking industry, McLean rapidly expanded his operations. By 1945, he boasted a fleet of 162 trucks primarily engaged in transporting textiles and cigarettes from North Carolina to the northeastern regions. As World War II veterans returned, McLean seized the opportunity to leverage GI loans, which could be used to finance vehicles, including trucks. By offering these veterans haulage contracts as independent operators, he indirectly benefited from the available financing, resulting in the addition of 600 more trucks to his fleet between 1947 and 1949.

At that time oil tankers travelled with empty top decks so in 1955 McLean bought an oil tanker and added a steel deck.  On April 26, 1956, the ship Ideal X sailed from Newark toward Houston with a whopping 58 containers on board. This was the birth of successful containerization.

By the mid-1960’s, The Port Authority of New York committed to spend $332 million to build a container port at Elizabeth, New Jersey. Forward to 1966, in his first trans-oceanic voyage, his Sea-Land Service sent a ship from Port Elizabeth to Rotterdam, arriving four weeks faster than any prior ship!

The impact was extraordinary. Global shipping costs plummeted from $6 per tonne to a mere $0.16 per tonne. McLean, a truck driver with a simple yet game-changing concept, is arguably one of the most influential entrepreneurs of the past century, the visionary who laid the groundwork for modern global trade.