Last week, South Korean shipping company Hanjin, the world’s seventh-largest container line, filed for bankruptcy after failing to reach an agreement with its creditors to alleviate its $5.37 billion in debt. This has left 85 of the 97 container ships the company operates literally stranded at sea, as ports refused to admit them for fear that stevedores and tugboat crews won’t be paid. Even if the situation is resolved soon, the unprecedented mess is an ominous indicator about the state of global trade.
“Ships get arrested on occasion, and container companies have gone bust in the past, but the difference here is a matter of scale,” says James Baker, editor of Containerisation International, a publication of the British shipping journal Lloyd’s List. “We’ve never seen such a larger line go down so comprehensively in such a large way.”
It works, but you definitely need to coat them properly. Used ones are usually pretty scratched up. If you bury two or more, you should take advantage of the bridge fittings that lock them securely together. The thing is, they are only designed to take weight on the corners. The corners can take a crazy amount of weight. The tops are corrugated steel, but I don’t know off hand how much weight they are designed to take. I jump around on them all the time, and there is no sagging or denting involved. It isn’t like a car roof or anything like that. I guess if you had one buried under six feet of earth, you would not want to be driving a bulldozer over it. I always wanted to leave about six inches around one, put some rebar in, and pour concrete over it.
By distillation or reverse osmosis. The class of ships I work on most make water constantly when offshore. The fresh water tanks are always overflowing onto the deck.
right up my alley
