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Whoa!!, as you say, too many questions!
They used to be managed by a card system, very time consuming. A straddle driver would be called and given a number and he would have to write it down.
When an import manifest is recvd it is entered into the system by a data processor. A yard planner then allocatse a spot in the terminal, depending on what is to happen to it,IE; is it mty, is for road, or rail etc.
When truckie arrives to pick it up, the girls enter the number and the location comes up.
The sheer quantity, our biggest exchanges are about 4500 moves, mostly they are in the 15/1800 range.
When boxes are recvd, they are not just stowed per ship. Within that area they are stowed for port of discharge.
Numbers are easily read, the cranes and straddles have very good lighting. Some boxes are harder to read than others, depending on paint colours. The worst are boxes painted an aqua colour with pink letters (I kid you not).
Yes the container No is very much the key.
With a yard move, the info is presented as per normal, a new position is given.
RFID chip, no idea what they are.
As for the numbers of boxes worldwide, yes it must number in the millions. Just remember if a ship takes 10,000TEU (boxes), the operator must budget for 30,000 boxes, 10k on the ship, 10k at each end.
Databases or each box is kept by the owner, if it is a leased box the shipping co will only have a data bases for it whilst it is under their control. Likewise we have a database, but only while it is in our terminal.
For example, a shipping co will have a box shown as in AKL, with arrival and dep dates, and if it is full or mty, they won't interested in all the moves we may do with it in the terminal. But we will have all those moves on our database. Confused???.
Stealing containers is quite an industry. You'd be amazed if for example you went to Tonga and see how many people live in containers. Think of it, nice and dry, don't get blown over or down, in a cyclone, if it's a reefer its even insulated. What more could you want.
And if we dare try and retreive them, the local govt's put so much in our way it not worth the effort. Result is, if you hire a box for certain parts of the world the lease rates are of the wall.
Russia, west africa and Papua New Guinea are the worst.
Several years ago a guy from one of the big leasing companies went up to the highlands in PNG, to try and retreive missing boxes and had his head taken off with a machete for his troubles.
Mike
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