Did Comecon [even] fail to standardize container sizes?

Upvote:0

I find this highly doubtful. They built container ships in the 1970s.

The Mercur I class of ships built in East Germany for the Soviet Union were produced from 1975 to 1978 and were intended to transport up to 840 twenty foot container equivalents (TEU). They were followed by the larger Mercur II class in the early 1980s.

For container usage outside of container ships see e.g. this picture from East Berlin in 1976.

Upvote:3

This is partly not true. The Comecon formally adopted early on the Soviet standard container sizes from "Soviet Union ГОСТ 9106-59 Контейнеры универсальные. Основные параметры".

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Whether non-USSR members actually used them as agreed is somewhat more of an open question. In fact, the paper says that despite including the Soviet containers in an ISO standard (as "Series 3"), few actually used them:

By 1962, much of Europe was allowing larger sizes of containers than was America, so the new American standard sizes, 8 feet high, 8 feet wide, and 10, 20, 30, or 40 feet long faced no technical obstacles. Many continental European railroads owned fleets of much smaller containers, made for 8 or 10 cubic meters of freight rather than the 72.5 cubic meter volume of a 40-foot container. The Europeans wanted their containers recognized as standard. The British, Japanese, and North American delegations were all opposed, because the European containers were slightly wider than 8 feet. “The metric countries” wanted to confirm the container sizes that had been in use in the UIC (Union Internationale des Chemins de fer). A compromise was struck in April 1963. Smaller containers, including the European railroad sizes and American 5-foot and 6 2/3-foot boxes would be recognized as "Series 2" containers. In 1964, these smaller sizes, along with 10-, 20-, 30-, and 40-foot containers, were formally adopted as ISO standards [7]. Then the Russians wanted their Eastern European sizes put in, so was called them Series 3. The first standards that came out in ISO Standard 668 included all three series. But when it came to the market place, no-one bought Series 2 or Series 3 for this new service called “intermodal containers”. Everyone went to Series 1, and several plenary meetings later, it was agreed to drop the Series 2 and 3. American negotiators says in memories that it was a big success for them [9].

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