Prepare a summary of the principles underlying containerisation and its advantages, using only the material in the following passage. Your summary will be used by a group of businessmen who are examining their firm's freight transportation methods. Give the summary a suitable title and do not use more than 150 words.

There have been many important developments in international transport during the last twenty years, such as the jumbo jet, the supersonic airliner, the hovercraft, giant oil tankers and so on. But one of the most far-reaching developments tends to be overlooked by the general public, who are more interested in spectacular events. This crucial development is that of containerisation.

What exactly does 'containerisation' mean? The concept is simple enough

- containers are used in which goods are packed. There is surely nothing very original about that. The containers are, moreover, constructed to standard international specifications. For example, they all measure eight feet in width, eight feet in height, and ten, twenty, thirty or forty feet in length. But again, there is nothing unusual in having a lot of similar-sized boxes. What is so special about containers?

The really significant impact of containers is their transmodality. This is a new term which is best illustrated by the following examples. One of the chief worries facing any manufacturer is that of ensuring swift, cheap and safe transport for his goods. Consider the problems facing a British factory exporting machinery to Malaysia. The goods must first be taken from the factory, by road, to a railway depot. The railway carries the goods to the docks, where they are stored in a transit shed. Then they are loaded on to a ship. When the ship reaches Malaysia the goods are unloaded. Then they are carried by rail and, later, perhaps by road or even river.

Every one of these steps entails delay, handling expenses, paperwork, and the danger of damage to the goods or pilferage. But consider how a container overcomes these problems. The manufacturer packs his cargo into a tough standard container which fits neatly on to a special lorry trailer. The lorry drives to a railway depot, where a special crane lifts the container off the trailer and directly on to a flat railway waggon within a minute. The freight train, consisting of perhaps a hundred such waggons, speeds to the docks.
Within a couple of hours a massive crane has swiftly lifted each container off its waggon and on to a specially built container ship waiting in an adjacent dock. And so on, whenever the mode of transport changes from road to rail, sea, river or (with limitations) air. The saving in labour is tremendous, and the speed is amazing. Within a single day a container ship can arrive fully laden at a port, unload, reload and leave on her next voyage. Within an hour or two a container train or 'freightliner' can unload and reload.
Containerised cargo is very secure against breakage and theft. The old danger of cargo breaking loose during a storm no longer applies when the ship's holds are completely filled with a neat stack of containers like so many bricks. And the containers need not be sent back to the factory, they can be re-used for different cargo just as a taxi carrie8 passengers from place to place. Imagine a taxi which could use road, rail or sea as it wished, and you have a rough approximation of transmodality, which is the concept of using all methods of transport for a single vehicle. Containers can, in fact, be looked upon as vehicles.
There are some drawbacks to containerisation, of course. Ports need to be equipped with very elaborate and expensive handling equipment, and a container ship cannot use ordinary ports. A small consignment of goods may not be enough to warrant a container.
But the advantages are tremendous for most kinds of freight. The high speed means that the exporter's goods arrive quickly, so that he receives payment sooner, and even the insurance charges are much lower.
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