Malcolm Purcell McLean Jr. was born on this day in 1913, in Maxton, to Malcolm Purcell McLean Sr. and Almena McLeod Currie McLean.
He graduated from high school, and pumped gas at a service station near his home. He saved enough money to buy a second-hand truck. With his brother, Jim, and his sister, Clara, he founded McLean Trucking Company in Fayetteville in 1934. Malcom (he changed the spelling of his first name) got his start hauling empty tobacco barrels, and Malcom was one of the drivers.
From that beginning, he built the company into the second-largest trucking company in the United States, and he moved the company to Winston-Salem. He sold the trucking company in 1955 and purchased the Pan-Atlantic Steamship Company and the Gulf Florida Terminal Company.
He invented and patented in 1956 the first metal shipping container which revolutionized the shipping industry. The shipping container allowed goods to be transported by ship, truck and rail without the need of unloading between modes in the traditional break bulk method. This became Sea Land Service Inc., the first containerized shipping company.
Sea Land was sold to R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company in 1969, and McLean joined the R. J. Reynolds Board of Directors until 1977. McLean purchased U. S. Lines, a small shipping company. This company filed for bankruptcy in 1986. He later founded Trailer Bridge, Inc.
McLean was married first to Margaret Britton Sikes McLean and second to Irena McLean. He passed away in 2001.
McLean was referred to as “the father of containerization.” On the morning of his funeral, container ships around the world blew their whistles in his honor.
