cargo containers
careers at Felixstowe
For thousands of years, ships' cargoes were unloaded piece by piece. Each box, crate or sack was lifted off separately, one at a time. It was a slow business. The modern way is very different. The cargo is put into large metal containers: cargo containers.
The containers are loaded into the ship, and stacked high on the deck. The containers also fit on the back of trucks and on railway carriages. So when the containers are unloaded from the ship they continue their journey from the port on the back of trucks or trains. It is a fast and efficient way of moving cargo.
A standard container is 20 feet long, 8 feet wide and 8 foot 6 inches high - big enough to hold a car. Although the standard container is 20 feet long, there are also double-length ones which are 40 feet long.
CONTAINER IDENTITY
Containers are like cars: each one has a unique number on it. The container keeps this number on it wherever it goes in the world and throughout its working life. The computer system uses this number to identify each container.
CONTAINER LOCATION
The computer stores the container's location as a mixture of letters and numbers. The containers are stacked in long rows, running the length of the docks. The row nearest the sea is row A, the next one is row B, and so on.
The views above and below are photographed from the North Quay Office.
Click on the image to download the full plan which shows the row letters and stack numbering (PDF file 149 KB).
The stacks are numbered along each row. This is Row A, and you are looking at stack 81.
The rows are seven containers wide (labelled A-G) and up to five containers high (labelled 1 to 5). So the yellow container on the ground on the left hand edge of this picture is in location A81G1. (A-81-G-1 = row-stack-depth-height.) This view is from the North Quay Office looking south.
Click on the picture for a bigger image which shows the row and stack markings on the ground.
Here, the view is from the North Quay Office looking north. It is a close-up of the big image at the top of this webpage and the panoramic view in the Felixstowe home page.
You are looking at Row B. See if you can work out the location reference, as it would be stored by the computer, for the small red container on the ground.
