This is
the VOA Special English Development Report.An American named Malcom McLean invented a better box and
changed the world. He designed the shipping containers that today carry most of
the world's goods. Standardized containers can go on ships, trains or trucks
and are easy to load and unload.
Malcom McLean was a truck driver who built a big trucking
company. Then he bought a steamship company which he later renamed Sea-Land. He
launched his idea in nineteen fifty-six using an old tanker.
![The outside of a PFNC home made from a shipping container The outside of a PFNC home made from a shipping container](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/eot2008/20090118113231im_/http://www.voanews.com/specialenglish/images/pfnc_net_exterior_5oct08_se.jpg) |
A PFNC Global Communities home made from a shipping container |
Malcom McLean died in two thousand one. But his work
lives on -- and not just for moving and storing goods. Surplus containers have
found use as offices and housing. In recent years, some wealthy people have had
homes designed from shipping containers. But containers also are being used for
emergency shelters and to shelter the homeless.A company called PFNC Global Communities has designed a
steel container home for poor people. It has thirty square meters of space with
a sleeping area, a bathroom and a kitchen. It also has connections for
electricity and water, and special paint to help protect against the sun’s
heat.
Several years ago, a graduate business student named
Brian McCarthy was visiting American companies in Ciudad Juarez, a border city
in Mexico. He was there as part of his studies. He saw that many workers lived
in shelters made of paper or scrap metal. More than a year later, he read about
a house designed from a shipping container.
At the time, his cousin Pablo Nava was in his third year
at Notre Dame University in the state of Indiana. Pablo Nava became interested in the
project. He suggested that they enter the idea in a competition for business
plans at the university. They won.
![The inside of a PFNC home The inside of a PFNC home](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/eot2008/20090118113231im_/http://www.voanews.com/specialenglish/images/pfnc_net_interior_5oct08_se.jpg) |
A look inside |
With Pablo Nava and two others, Brian McCarthy
established PFNC Global Communities to build the container homes. PFNC stands
for the Spanish words "Por Fin Nuestra Casa" -- "Finally, a Home
of Our Own." The company now operates in the American state of New Mexico
but will move to Juarez soon. The
sample home is twelve meters long and about two and a half meters in width and
height. The kitchen has a stove to cook meals and a refrigerator to keep foods
cold. Children and adults have separate sleeping areas.
The
company hopes manufacturers in Ciudad Juarez will buy the homes for workers and
their families. PFNC wants to keep the price below ten thousand dollars.
And
that’s the VOA Special English Development Report, written by Jerilyn Watson.