On April 26, 1956, Malcolm McLuhan, a service station manager, loaded the first commercial container in the port of Newark. This container revolutionized the transport of goods by interoperable routes, whether by sea and river, air, rail and road. This basic building block of industrial logistics has made it possible to build a supply chain that has been deployed on a global scale. This system has caused a real “creative destruction” in the various logistics trades (dockers, crane operators, carriers, traders, etc.), but also in shipbuilding, aeronautics and the automotive industry, as well as in civil engineering (roads, quays and docks). This vast redeployment was driven by the search for economies of scale, productivity gains, standardisation of transported products, a drastic reduction in transport costs and better security of exchanges. These advances, combined with lower customs duties, have made it possible to globalise and intensify trade between continents, countries and regions. Container flows have fluctuated in line with economic growth rates and free trade agreements. They have prospered despite criticism denouncing job losses, shipwrecks and road accidents, as well as water and air pollution.
This universal logistics network was partially disconnected during the Covid period and it risks being redeployed and partially disabled by the slowdown in trade that will result from the increase in customs duties decided by the new US presidency. This return to protectionism will probably reactivate industrial projects and social movements in favor of local transport modes, the revival of river navigation, multimodal rail-road transport, bulk distribution, the relocation of production and the organization of production on a just-in-time and zero-stock basis, and in general, the shortening of the supply chain… The logistics of tomorrow are conditioned by the results of the (perhaps ephemeral) American experiment of “deglobalization” of world trade, but the current logistics infrastructures, based on the container ecosystem, should persist by adapting to the specific needs and constraints of transport and storage of industrial and commercial activities. The question is therefore perhaps less to think about the logistics that “we want for tomorrow”, than about the logistics that are still “possible for tomorrow”.
Note by Jean-Jacques Pluchart
