Container terminal is the hub of land and water intermodal transportation, the buffer for container goods when they change the mode of transportation, and the junction of goods. Therefore, container terminal plays an important role in the whole process of container transportation.

Since its rise in the United States in April 1956, maritime container transportation has experienced more than 60 years of development history. To adapt to the rapid development of container transportation, many multi-purpose and special container yards have emerged one after another. In the whole process of container transportation, the container yard plays a very important role in improving the freight speed, accelerating the turnover of vehicles and ships, and reducing the overall transportation cost.

With the development of container transportation, the proportion of containerization of miscellaneous goods is increasing, and the container traffic volume is rising. According to the principle of economies of scale, the larger the ship, the lower the unit cost. Therefore, in order to reduce the transportation cost of container ships, the container ships newly put into use by each container ship transportation company are becoming larger and larger, and the corresponding terminals are also becoming larger and larger. The water depth at the wharf apron is increasing, the length of the berth along the coastline is lengthening, and the area of the storage yard and the whole wharf is expanding.

Due to the increasing size of container ships, the time allowed for ships to stay at the wharf is relatively short from the analysis of voyage economic accounting. By shortening the berthing time of container ships at the wharf, we can reduce the berthing cost, improve the navigation efficiency of container transport ships, give full play to the advantages of ship unit transportation cost, reduce the cost of whole process waterway transportation, and improve economic benefits. To ensure that container ships can load and unload containers in the shortest time, modern container terminals are generally equipped with specialized, automated, and efficient loading and unloading machinery.

The efficiency of container transportation business comes from the modernization of management, which is based on the convenience of transportation information transmission and high-speed processing. In the container terminal, information transmission comes from two aspects: one is the information contact between the terminal, external customers and relevant departments, and the other is the information contact between the on-site command inside the terminal and the production command center. The former uses electronic data exchange technology, while the latter uses field data input instrument to reduce the error rate in the whole information transmission process. The effective operation of modern container terminals requires not only high cultural quality and skilled technology, but also advanced management means. Some advanced container terminals, such as Singapore and Rotterdam, have realized the automation of yard operations and inspection operations.