CSCMP's 2016 Supply Chain Hall of Fame Inductee, Malcolm McClean

Malcom McLean
Category: Industry Transformer

Malcom McLean started a small trucking company, McLean Trucking, to transport farmers’ goods and supplies. In the 1950s, he sold his business and focused on the need for an easier method of unloading goods from trucks and transferring them to ships. He gambled big on a container venture that required refitting ships and designing trailers to stack below or on the decks. In 1956, his first container ship set sail. McLean’s new company, Sea-Land, worked with the Port of New York Authority’s to develop a new container port anointing cargo shipping as the method of the future. More and more ports adapted to the containers, and shipping was revolutionized. McLean sold Sea-Land but continued to produce inventions such as “econoships” that carry cargo at the equator while smaller ships pick up and deliver containers.