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Source: Incongruities 63

replaced by air freight, except for bulk commodities. Costs of ocean
freight were rising at a fast clip, and it took longer and longer to get
merchandise delivered by freighter as one port after another became
badly congested. This, in turn, increased pilferage at the docks as
more and more merchandise piled up waiting to be loaded while ves-
sels could not make it to the pier.
The basic reason was that the shipping industry had misdirected
its efforts toward nonresults for many years. It had tried to design and
build faster ships, and ships that required less fuel and a smaller crew.
It concentrated on the economics of the ship while at sea and in tran-
sit from one port to another.
But a ship is capital equipment; and for all capital equipment the
biggest cost is the cost of not working, during which interest has to
be paid while the equipment does not earn. Everybody in the indus-
try knew, of course, that the main expense of a ship is interest on the
investment. Yet the industry kept on concentrating its efforts on costs
that were already quite low—the costs of the ship while at sea and
doing work.
The solution was simple: Uncouple loading from stowing. Do the
loading on land, where there is ample space and where it can be per-
formed before the ship is in port, so that all that has to be done is to
put on and take off pre-loaded freight. Concentrate, in other words,
on the costs of not working rather than on those of working. The
answer was the roll-on, roll-off ship and the container ship.
The results of these simple innovations have been startling.
Freighter traffic in the last thirty years has increased up to five-
fold. Costs, overall, are down by 60 percent. Port time has been
cut by three-quarters in many cases, and with it congestion and
pilferage.

Incongruity between perceived reality and actual reality often
declares itself. But whenever serious, concentrated efforts do not
make things better but, on the contrary, make things worse—where
faster ships only mean more port congestion and longer delivery
times—it is highly probable that efforts are being misdirected. In all
likelihood, refocusing on where the results are will yield substantial
returns easily and fast.
Indeed, the incongruity between perceived and actual reality rarely
requires “heroic” innovations. Uncoupling the loading of freight from
the stowing thereof required little but adapting to the ocean-going