rubber-tired gantry crane

Arriving Today: From Factory to Front Door -- Why Everything Has Changed About How and What We Buy
by Christopher Mims
Published 13 Sep 2021

Confusingly, the unit by which the entire industry measures containerized shipping is the twenty-foot-container equivalent, so every forty-foot container, which is the vast majority of them, counts twice. The container yards of modern ports are like giant stacks of multicolored children’s blocks divided into neat piles, each with a purpose. Carried aloft by a rubber-tired gantry crane, or RTG, our container will be stacked on top of and then rest below others and moved multiple times during its brief stay in the port, as software algorithms dictate the most efficient way to order containers so they will be available when their next destination, a big oceangoing vessel, comes to call.

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