Why Did that Bridge Collapse?

So, it turns out that we don’t yet know how come the container ship veered off course and smashed into the Francis Scott Key bridge, but we do know how come the bridge collapsed. And the reason was because the bridge was built fifty years ago when ships carrying containers were about half as big as they are now.

The Transportation Secretary, Pete Buttigieg, said that together the ship and its cargo load probably weighed 200 million pounds, which made the collision an ‘unimaginable’ event.

What was a cargo ship the size of a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier carrying which would require a vessel of such size designed to carry so much weight?

I’ll tell you what it was carrying.

It was carrying the same stuff which today is stored in the more than 5 billion square feet of space which Americans have rented in those walk-in storage lockers that proliferate on the edge of every urban location throughout the United States.

A few years ago, I drove from Louisville, KY to my home outside of Springfield, MA. I had some extra time so instead of taking the interstate, I decided to take local roads and drive through the cities and towns located along my way.

I noticed two things in the more than thirty towns in the six states (KY, WV, MD, PA, NY CT) which I drove through on my way…