Editing Intermodal container (section)

===Impact in worldwide supply shortage of 2020 to present===
{{update|section|date=May 2025}}
Some experts have said that the centralized, continuous shipping process made possible by containers has created dangerous liabilities: one bottleneck, delay, or other breakdown at any point in the process can easily cause major delays everywhere up and down the supply chain.<ref name="vox article" />

The reliance on containers exacerbated some of the economic and societal damage from the [[2021 global supply chain crisis]] of 2020 and 2021, and the resulting [[shortages related to the COVID-19 pandemic]]. In January 2021, for example, a shortage of shipping containers at ports caused shipping to be backlogged.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Partners|first=McAlinden Research|date=2020-11-16|title=Shipping Container Shortage Could Last Until Next Year, Boosting Container Leasing Stocks|url=https://mcalindenresearchpartners.com/2020/11/16/shipping-container-shortage-could-last-until-next-year-boosting-container-leasing-stocks/|access-date=2021-02-03|website=McAlinden Research Partners|language=en-US}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|last=cameronc86|date=2020-12-31|title=Container Shortage – The Reasons Behind It|url=https://www.clearfreight.com/post/container-shortage-the-reasons-behind-it|access-date=2021-02-03|website=ClearFreight|language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|date=2020-11-09|title=Shipping companies box clever to overcome container shortages|url=https://www.thenationalnews.com/business/economy/shipping-companies-box-clever-to-overcome-container-shortages-1.1108049|access-date=2021-02-03|website=The National|language=en}}</ref>

Marc Levinson, author of ''Outside the Box: How Globalization Changed from Moving Stuff to Spreading Ideas'' and ''[[The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger]]'', said in an interview:<ref name="vox article"/>

<blockquote>Because of delays in the process, it's taking a container longer to go from its origin to its final destination where it's unloaded, so the container is in use longer for each trip. You've just lost a big hunk of the total capacity because the containers can't be used as intensively.

We've had in the United States an additional problem, which is that the ship lines typically charge much higher rates on services from Asia to North America than from North America to Asia. This has resulted in complaints, for example, from farmers and agricultural companies, that it's hard to get containers in some parts of the country because the ship lines want to ship them empty back to Asia, rather than letting them go to South Dakota and load over the course of several days. So we've had exporters in the United States complaining that they have a hard time finding a container that they can use to send their own goods abroad.<ref name="vox article"/></blockquote>