What is a Container Ship?

What is a Container Ship?

In a broad sense, a container ship is any type of transport adapted for carrying large standard boxes—containers. However, most often, this term refers to water vessels.

Features of a Container Ship

Container ships are vessels of various sizes designed to transport large cargo units, i.e., containers.

These ships differ in capacity and range. Containers do not require additional maintenance during transit; they only need to be loaded into the holds and securely fastened inside. Such vessels have a high level of automation, minimizing the human factor. Therefore, the crew of a container ship typically consists of a maximum of 26 people, even for the largest-tonnage vessels.

Most often, container ships are equipped with self-loading cranes or ramp systems. This ensures fast loading and unloading, saving time and costs. During water transportation, ships do not need to enter numerous ports or undergo customs procedures, which is why, despite the relatively low speed of cargo water transport, shipping goods via rivers, seas, and oceans is currently one of the simplest, fastest, and cheapest methods.

What Do Container Ships Carry?

Any goods, except for living organisms and perishable products, can be transported in 20 or 40-foot containers. These include:

• Bulk cargo;
• Large-sized cargo;
• Oversized cargo;
• Standard cargo;
• Heavyweight cargo.

This means they can transport machinery, furniture, equipment for factories and plants, household and office appliances, books, cosmetics, and more.

Types of Container Ships

Ships vary in capacity as well as the duration of their voyages. Based on this, they are classified into oceanic and feeder vessels.

• Oceanic vessels operate between continents and are designed for a small number of stops at major ports.
• Feeder vessels have smaller capacities and operate over shorter distances between smaller ports.