Before shipping containers became standard, goods would be loaded on to ships by teams of people in crates, barrels or sacs. This was hard and time-consuming work as they would have to plan out where items could be stowed and this could take days to load a ship. The idea to have a standardised box that could be easily handled by different modes of transport has been around since the mid-1700s and was first used on the canals for coal transportation. This progressed to many attempts to standardise loads by many different countries. A well known one before the ISO container appeared is the Conflat system used by the railways however these could not be stacked. The ISO container first appeared in 1956 and is accredited to Malcolm McLean who owned a trucking company in the US and decided to go into shipping with a pair of converted oil tankers. The container was an all steel construction and had had reinforced corners so could be stacked on top of each other. This grew steadily and took off in the 1960s when the US army started using them for transporting goods and in 1968 the ISO standard for containers ISO 688 was set. The models represent most containers that are currently in use and the more common types such as the 20ft, 40ft and 40ft High cube feature different doors for certain liveries.
