A new Dutch foldable container technology will be tested in Chicago in January 2022 that could demonstrate how to reduce empty container handling moves at ports for trucking and rail while reducing the need for empty container storage at container terminals and on ships. The demonstration include the unloading of four import containers and folding the units, using a forklift machine, into the space of a single 40-foot unit container, loaded onto a truck, trucked to a rail yard in the Chicago area, loaded onto a rail car, as a single 40-foot unit, and shipped by rail to either Seattle or Vancouver for transport by ocean carrier back to Shanghai. The expected cost of the 4FOLD will be higher than for standard forty-foot containers but the savings in container handling moves plus the projected increase in cargo-handling velocity could not come at a more opportune time. The estimated savings is up to 200 million tons of CO2 emissions and $25 billion US per year in transport costs.
