MIDI-Systainers

[Coen]

The Midi Systainer is just the odd one in the lineup. No carts for it (although it fits other carts), no drawers, only 2 heights. E.g.; If you wanted to make a wider Wire Systainer you're out of luck, as the Midi isn't sold in the Sys-4 height.

To all those who say that the Maxi should be updated to T-loc; how do you imagine that? Classic Sys to T-Loc sys has already seen the lid bend open at the edges if you stack a bunch of Systainer and lift them using the handle of the top Systainer.

Yup,  I've looked into those too.  I think it would help if ISO adopted them so that it might gain more global traction.  It's hard to say if you can find them in the US or not.  A number of places sell units that look like them, but give no details to tell you if they are the Euro Containers.  Spec sheets list things in all inches, so you have no idea what you are actually buying, another classic case of covering reality (metric system) and just making things super confusing.  Other sources certainly look to be them, but if an average person can buy them is a different story.  Big picture is I think they can be had here, just not straightforward as trying to find them keeps taking you to Europe websites/companies.  Of course ideally you would be able to find them in retail stores.  Retail stores here love selling folks totes, sell different versions from the same companies that other stores sells, then pull them off the shelves and put a different model on the shelves, then maybe a few years later bring the old one back for a while.  Basically they know folks want standardization, so by continually changing what they sell, people keep re-buying totes and throwing the old ones out.

The Systainers are nice for tools due to the latching and other aspects.  The Euro Containers look to be good for other things. 

Like a lot of things, we need a few things to happen.  If the EU succeeds in getting Pallet Wide  ISO containers universalized and then made standard in places like the US, then maybe we can adopt Euro Pallet (ours are close right now) 48x40" (1220mm x 1016mm) So still a bit big, but probably manageable, then getting to European style containers can work better.  For sure the auto industry has in part introduced the Euro Containers to the US, but still, they aren't a common thing around here.  I don't think we have PW ISO containers yet because they would exceed US law for road width or be darn close.  Bunch of small changes needed.  The great irony that intermodal containers are a US invention, that has been adopted everyplace else in the world much more so than in the US.

Well, ISO standardized paper-sizes, didn't they? And yet large parts of the US still don't stick to it. I sometimes work for companies that are part of an American corporation and their global templates for Office put everything to Letter paper size.  :
Yet nobody here ever uses Letter and the printer only has A4 and A3, so everyone who doesn't notice just freaks out about prints having stuff printed right on the top and bottom edge of the paper..