A New Way to Carry the Cargo?

Automating shipping ports are the next big thing in safety and savings. So what are we waiting for?

When ships carrying massive amounts of manufactured goods arrive in San Francisco from Asia, the containers are unloaded using gantry cranes, transport vehicles and stacking cranes. And, here in the United States, it’s usually a human operating those machines on site.

Other container ports around the world are getting savvy about how they ship. The Rotterdam port in the Netherlands, for example, is considered the most advanced in the world, having automated all of its moving parts. More recently, the Emirati ports of Khalifa and Jebel Ali will be moving forward with increased automation and remote operation of their container terminals. 

Placing the control room outside of the terminal is more secure for crane operators, and automated rail-mounted gantry cranes speed up transfers. Overall, it’s about handling growth.

Here in the United States, we are all for automation in manufacturing, but we need to be thinking outside of the box—literally—and start getting our container ports in shipshape. No?