Ulrich Cramer
After studying vehicle and aircraft manufacturing, from the early 60s, the Author began his career focusing on transport equipment engineering. He firstly worked for the vehicle, chassis and rolltrailer manufacturer MAFI. Then, in 1971, he established CONTEC, his own Engineering Consultancy, which developed and introduced a wide range of innovative container and container-handling designs.
Using his own experiences and recollections, Ulrich Cramer describes in this book how the shipping container developed from its early days in the USA in the 1950s into a global, trimodal, industry - spreading to all parts of the World. He recounts the story from a technical engineer's viewpoint.
It was Cramer who had the idea for the hugely successful MAFI rolltrailer,which was registered for a patent in 1966. And, with MAFI in 1967 he built the very first steel containers for ACL - which was also the first European container shipping line consortium - contributing significantly to the steel container becoming the dominant material used for shipping containers.
When container traffic started in Europe, Cramer developed the "Portalift" for MAFI - Europe's first portal container handler.
His pioneering work also included the design and construction of CIMC, the first container factory to be established in China in 1980, followed by the production of the first two steel containers to be produced there in 1981. This book tells how the project started from its small beginnings.
With his technical knowledge of container manufacturing, Cramer has, over the years, also become involved in numerous projects relating to inland containers, swap bodies - as well as transport and handling equipment.
