If containerships are the cheapest way to transport cargo, why aren’t we using canals instead of railways and highways to transport goods over land?

Question

If containerships are the cheapest way to transport cargo, why aren’t we using canals instead of railways and highways to transport goods over land?

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Answer 1

Shipping by container ship is cheap because those ships are [enormous](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_container_ships#/media/File:EVER_ACE_(51426160884).jpg). Some can carry over 10,000 containers at a time. So if it costs $2 million per trip, that’s still only $200 per container.

A canal wide enough & deep enough for a ship like this would be prohibitively expensive. And if you have to unload a big container ship and load it into a smaller canal ship, you don’t get this economy of scale.