Cargo

The word cargo refers in particular to goods or produce being conveyed – generally for commercial gain – by ship, boat, or aircraft, although the term is now often extended to cover all types of freight, including that carried by train, van, truck, or intermodal container. The term cargo is also used in case of goods in the cold-chain, because the perishable inventory is always in transit towards a final end-use, even when it is held in cold storage or other similar climate-controlled facility.

Multi-modal container units, designed as reusable carriers to facilitate unit load handling of the goods contained, are also referred to as cargo, specially by shipping lines and logistics operators. Similarly, aircraft ULD boxes are also documented as cargo, with associated packing list of the items contained within. When empty containers are shipped each unit is documented as a cargo and when goods are stored within, the contents are termed as containerised cargo.

Transportation types

Marine

Seaport terminals handle a wide range of maritime cargo.

Harbor Freight Tools

Harbor Freight Tools is a privately held discount tool and equipment retailer, headquartered in Calabasas, California, which operates a chain of retail stores as well as a mail-order and eCommerce business. The company has over 600 stores in 47 states, offering over 7,000 tools and related products. The company employs over 11,000 people in the U.S.

History

Harbor Freight was founded in 1977 as a mail-order business by Eric Smidt and his father, Allan, in a small North Hollywood building, as Harbor Freight & Salvage Co. The company changed its name to Harbor Freight Tools and, in 1980, opened its first retail store in Lexington, Kentucky. In 1985, Eric Smidt became the president of Harbor Freight; he served under that title until 1999 when he became CEO.

Mail order

The company subsequently acquired US General, another mail-order tool and equipment company. At first, the company mailed promotions in standard #10 business envelopes. In the early 1980s, the company relocated to Camarillo, CA, acquiring the former headquarters of Unity, another large mail-order company, and launched its first mail-order catalog in the mid-1980s.

Rail freight transport

Rail freight transport is the use of railroads and trains to transport cargo as opposed to human passengers.

A freight train or goods train is a group of freight cars (US) or goods wagons (UIC) hauled by one or more locomotives on a railway, transporting cargo all or some of the way between the shipper and the intended destination as part of the logistics chain. Trains may haul bulk material, intermodal containers, general freight or specialized freight in purpose-designed cars. Rail freight practices and economics vary by country and region.

When considered in terms of ton-miles or tonne-kilometers hauled per unit of energy consumed, rail transport can be more efficient than other means of transportation. Maximum economies are typically realized with bulk commodities (e.g., coal), especially when hauled over long distances. However, shipment by rail is not as flexible as by highway, which has resulted in much freight being hauled by truck, even over long distances. Moving goods by rail often involves transshipment costs, particularly when the shipper or receiver lack direct rail access. These costs may exceed that of operating the train itself, a factor that practices such as containerization aim to minimize.

Mother Goose

The figure of Mother Goose is the imaginary author of a collection of fairy tales and nursery rhymes often published as (Old) Mother Goose's Rhymes. As a character, she appears in one nursery rhyme. A Christmas pantomime called Mother Goose is often performed in the United Kingdom. The so-called "Mother Goose" rhymes and stories have formed the basis for many classic British pantomimes. Mother Goose is generally depicted in literature and book illustration as an elderly country woman in a tall hat and shawl, a costume identical to the peasant costume worn in Wales in the early 20th century, but is sometimes depicted as a goose (usually wearing a bonnet).

Identity

Mother Goose is the name given to an archetypal country woman. She is credited with the Mother Goose stories and rhymes popularized in the 1700s in English-language literature, although no specific writer has ever been identified with such a name.

17th century English readers would have been familiar with Mother Hubbard, a stock figure when Edmund Spenser published his satire Mother Hubberd's Tale in 1590; as well as with similar fairy tales told by "Mother Bunch" (the pseudonym of Madame d'Aulnoy) in the 1690s. An early mention appears in an aside in a French versified chronicle of weekly happenings, Jean Loret's La Muse Historique, collected in 1650. His remark, comme un conte de la Mère Oye ("like a Mother Goose story") shows that the term was readily understood. Additional 17th century Mother Goose/Mere l'Oye references appear in French literature in the 1620s and 1630s.