Exploring diverse maintenance and repair standards in the container industry: a comparative analysis of criteria and practices

Abstract

The maintenance and repair standards have always been a problem in the container industry. Due to different preferences of criterias of different parties caused many conflicts. This paper examines the different types of criterias and standards for general purpose containers, and different areas of use of these criterias. The main reason of this paper is to be an explanatory element to define the differences of these criterias. The fundamental structural dimensional basis for an intermodal container is ISO container standards which defines the main structural features. Although it presents dimensional tolerances to a certain degree, it is nearly impossible to use these criterias for the operators and owners in day to day operations. As a result there have been various published maintenance and repair criterias, used by different parties partaking in the container industry. The different organizations and associations published standards suiting their own needs. Although there are lesser implemented criterias like Wind and Water Tight and Cargo Worth, the most known and most implemented criterias around the world are Unified Container Inspection and Repair Criteria, Common Interchange Criteria and IICL publications. While the Wind and Water Tight criteria is generally used for containers which are used as storage, the Cargo Worthy is used for the containers meet the minimum requirements for transport. The Unified Container Inspection Criteria is preferred by the shipping lines and operators, and the Common Interchange Criteria and IICL – 6 are preferred by lessors.