Mode of transport in the context of "Containerization"

Transport (in British English) or transportation (in American English) is the intentional movement of humans, animals, and goods from one location to another. Modes of transport include air, land (rail and road), water, cable, pipelines, and space. The field can be divided into infrastructure, vehicles, and operations. Transport enables human trade, which is essential for the development of civilizations.

Transport infrastructure consists of fixed installations, including roads, railways, airways, waterways, canals, and pipelines, as well as terminals such as airports, railway stations, bus stations, warehouses, trucking terminals, refueling depots (including fuel docks and fuel stations), and seaports. Terminals may be used both for the interchange of passengers and cargo and for maintenance.

Travel is the movement of people between distant geographical locations. Travel can be done by foot, bicycle, automobile, train, boat, bus, airplane, ship or other means, with or without luggage, and can be one way or round trip. Travel can also include relatively short stays between successive movements, as in the case of tourism.

A bicycle, also called a pedal cycle, bike, push-bike or cycle, is a human-powered or motor-assisted, pedal-driven, single-track vehicle, with two wheels attached to a frame, one behind the other. A bicycle rider is called a cyclist, or bicyclist.

The bicycle was introduced in the 19th century in Europe. By the early 21st century, there were more than 1 billion bicycles. Bicycles are the principal means of transport in many regions. They also provide a popular form of recreation, and have been adapted for use as children's toys. Bicycles are used for fitness, military and police applications, courier services, bicycle racing, and artistic cycling.

A freight rate (historically and in ship chartering simply freight) is a price at which a certain cargo is delivered from one point to another. The price depends on the form of the cargo, the mode of transport (truck, ship, train, aircraft), the weight of the cargo, and the distance to the delivery destination. Many shipping services, especially air carriers, use dimensional weight for calculating the price, which takes into account both weight and volume of the cargo.

For example, bulk coal long-distance rates in America are approximately 1 cent/ton-mile. So a 100 car train, each carrying 100 tons, over a distance of 1000 miles, would cost $100,000. On the other hand, Intermodal container shipping rates depend heavily on the route taken over the weight of the cargo, just as long as the container weight does not exceed the maximum lading capacity. Prices can vary between $300-$10,000 per Twenty foot equivalent unit (TEU) depending on the supply and demand of a given route.

An intermodal container, often called a shipping container, or a freight container, (or simply "container") is a large metal crate designed and built for intermodal freight transport, meaning these containers can be used across different modes of transport – such as from ships to trains to trucks – without unloading and reloading their cargo. Intermodal containers are primarily used to store and transport materials and products efficiently and securely in the global containerized intermodal freight transport system, but smaller numbers are in regional use as well. It is like a boxcar that does not have wheels. Based on size alone, up to 95% of intermodal containers comply with ISO standards, and can officially be called ISO containers. These containers are known by many names: cargo container, sea container, ocean container, container van or sea van, sea can or C can, or MILVAN, or SEAVAN. The term CONEX (Box) is a technically incorrect carry-over usage of the name of an important predecessor of the ISO containers: the much smaller steel CONEX boxes used by the U.S. Army.

Intermodal containers exist in many types and standardized sizes, but 90 percent of the global container fleet are "dry freight" or "general purpose" containers: durable closed rectangular boxes, made of rust-retardant weathering steel; almost all 8 feet (2.4 m) wide, and of either 20 or 40 feet (6.1 or 12.2 m) standard length, as defined by International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standard 668:2020. The worldwide standard heights are 8 feet 6 inches (2.6 m) and 9 feet 6 inches (2.9 m) – the latter are known as High Cube or Hi-Cube (HC or HQ) containers. Depending on the source, these containers may be termed TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units), reflecting the 20- or 40-foot dimensions.