Global trade depends on logistics working like a well-oiled machine. If your car wasn’t built in America, it likely experienced quite the journey before you even put the first mile on it. Cars are often loaded onto trucks or trains, rolled out to ports, then loaded onto ships. After a journey across the ocean, they land at another port where trucks and trains bring them to distributors. All of this is fascinating – but hold on, why do ships sail the weirdest routes?
Lewin wrote about the Morning Midas, a roll-on roll-off ship that was headed to Mexico from China but caught fire close to the Aleutian Islands. If you’re wondering why a ship from China on its way to Mexico ended up somewhat near Alaska, reader Bob has you covered:
It’s “The Great Circle Route.” Maps are flat, but the world is round (really, I promise) so what looks like a straight line on a map actually needs to curve to pick the shortest and most fuel-efficient route. Here’s what it looks like from the two closest airports.
Not all ships will take this route, but so many do. Here’s what a marine tracker shows for shipping routes across the Pacific right now. Note that the Morning Midas was following a fairly normal route! You can read more about so-called RoRo ships here.
I marked the ship’s last transmitted position on the map above with a red circle and the routes are shown with black lines. As the Maritime Executive writes, the Great Circle route has been used by sailors for centuries to reach their destinations in the most efficient way possible. Now, navigators are using modern technology to make these routes even more efficient than before.
In other news, Jason wrote a Cold Start where he mentioned that the Esso gas station chain gets its name from Standard Oil. “Esso” is basically just a phonetic spelling for “S.O.,” which is neat. Jason then noted that he thought Arby’s was a phonetic way to spell “R.B.” as in “roast beef.” OHsnap said:
Pretty sure everyone except Jason knew Arby’s was “R.B.s”
Flyingstitch said:
*Timidly raises hand in solidarity with Jason.*
I got confused, too, so I looked it up. Here’s what Arby’s says about its history:
Arby’s was founded in 1964, but the concept for a roast beef sandwich franchise was rooted many years earlier. Forrest Raffel, and his younger brother Leroy, bought an uncle’s restaurant equipment business in the 1950s. The small company rapidly grew to become one of the country’s leading foodservice consulting firms. Raffel Brothers, Inc. designed and installed hundreds of foodservice facilities including the flight kitchens at Greater Pittsburgh International Airport, interiors of six Ohio Turnpike restaurants, and foodservice facilities for the Hospitality Inn motel chain of Standard Oil of Ohio.
The Raffel brothers quickly sensed the potential of fast food and decided to develop a franchise operation based on something other than hamburgers. A late-night excursion to a small Boston sandwich shop one rainy Halloween was the inspiration for the Raffels, who joined a damp, but determined huddle of patrons to await the main attraction – a 69-cent roast beef sandwich.
The idea was born. The only kink in the chain’s orderly development came with choosing a name. The partners wanted to use the name ” Big Tex”, but were unsuccessful in negotiating with the Akron businessman who was already using the name. So, in the words of Forrest, “We came up with Arby’s, which stands for R.B., the initials of Raffel Brothers, although I guess customers might think the initials stand for roast beef.”
Well I’ll be dipped! Have a great weekend, everyone.
Top graphic image: Hoegh Autoliners
RE: Arbys, their management company is named Sybra, Arbys spelled backwards…
I always thought that the change from ESSO to EXXON was an homage to President NIXON.
So Earth is round? Thanks.
You’d be surprised how many people need to learn that fact.
I seem to recall a time when physical globes were a common sight in libraries and classrooms.
The people I refer to seldom frequent such places.
I made the mistake of accidentally pausing on a “flat earth” discussion on some social media site because I couldn’t believe what I saw. Well, if you pause, they keep recommending that crap and I’m sorry to say I couldn’t help but read some of the posts. The stupidity of some people is staggering.
I’ve recently been very surprised to learn how many think the moon doesn’t rotate on its own axis.
Nah, everybody knows the Earth is round.
https://www.unlv.edu/sites/default/files/styles/1920_width/public/releases/main-images/Flat%20Earth_0.jpg
The earth is a sphere (sort of). Something can simultaneously be both round and flat.
While the earth being a spheroid rather than a sphere was mentioned, it’s helpful to remember that most globes are spheres, meaning your experiment with a string underrepresented the impact of heading away from the equator.
A potentially fun fact to illustrate that is that beaches at the equator are further from the center of the earth than the peak of Mt Everest is.
Yes, distance from center of earth to sea level/beach at equator is greater than sea level/beach at the poles. 3,963 miles at equator vs 3,949 miles at Poles. Approximately 13 miles delta
No, equator beach is not further from the center of the earth than summit of mt. Everest. 3,963 miles at equator vs 3,966 miles at Everest summit.
A lot of us get a little thicker around the mid section as we age. We don’t need you body-shaming the earth here. 🙂
I’ll be dipped. ISWYDT, well played.
The Great Circle.
I flew to South Korea from Atlanta. The plane was over the polar Ice cap on the way over. The flight back should have been less time, except it didn’t fly that route. It flew due east until it was nearly over Japan, then turned north to do the great circle route. This is because North Korea isn’t concerned about aircraft coming from Russia into North Korea, but is about ones coming from South Korea.
My last international flight was to Qatar. It took stank forever. Because the routes both ways were due east/west. The reason is that the circle route to the Middle East puts you over Ukraine. Given the fighting in the Holy Land area and Syria and the like, it pretty much made the only route due east/west. There was a tiny bit of circle to the trip across the Atlantic, I think I went from Dallas to around NYC or so, but it was nothing like being over the Polar caps like the shortest route would have been.
Okay interesting but does anyone know if submarines have shorter route because they can sail a straight line by submerging? Yeah no one else thought of that one did they?
Depends on how deep they dive…
I knew the SO story but not the false RB one.
But back to this the world is round. Next you will be trying to tell me the moon landing wasn’t faked.
AMERICA’S ROAST BEEF YES SIR!
If they had just thought a little and said Sandwiches they would have had RB and a much more successful franchise program
Well I just went down a wikipedia rabbit hole of navigation and geometry. 😀
The great circle is also why a polar flight from Seattle to London takes about the same amount of time as a trans Atlantic flight from New York.
I think shipping routes are still affected by currents as well as geometry, although not as much as sailing ships whose routing and scheduling depended on prevailing winds
YES!
“Cars? I’ve owned a few” and I have realized that if you drag the globe in this graphic until you’re directly above the route it’s even easier to see why a Great Circle course is actually a straight line and the shortest distance between two points on the globe.
https://www.greatcirclemap.com/?routes=YNT-ZIH
And it took me three years to realize that the strapline “You Rule!” is because it’s for Burger…King.
Thank you for sharing the map link, I spent way too much time playing around with it!!!
It’s a good one!
I’m sorry, my roots in the MA northshore don’t let me betray Kelly’s by going to Arby’s
No way—overpriced with a just dollop of the cheapest Kraft BBQ sauce! Bill & Bob’s is much better, or really almost any other place that uses James River, the true RB sauce. And I’ve heard multiple times that my criticisms only apply to the newer Kelly’s locations as it’s the one on the beach that was legendary, but that legend must predate me eating there in the early ’90s, which means it might as well be about King Arthur.
Kelly’s allegedly uses James River. I do always ask for extra sauce. I did grow up waiting in the drive through around simards in Wilmington.
Maybe that’s a change? It’s been . . . quite a lot of years now, but the last two times I went, it looked like Kraft Kansas City style whatever that is and not even much of it. That was the Danvers location, I think, and I went because it was convenient at the time. Second time, I vowed never again. And now I barely eat out at all anymore and not much red meat, either. Everything got so expensive and I got better at cooking.
One of my best teachers in elementary school had us hold a piece of string against a globe between two locations (the further north, the better). Then we compared that to doing the same on a Mercator projection. Life altering 🙂
To be honest, if not for the Cold War (and movies like War Games) it’s too easy to think of the globe as an “east-west” situation, completely ignoring the poles.
I also learned to hate the Mercator projection from a pretty early ago. I almost wish there wasn’t one hanging in the Oval Office, maybe Denmark could breathe a little easier if Trump knew that Greenland wasn’t the largest landmass on earth.
I taught my daughter geometry with paper cutouts. It is one thing to show it, another to acually experience it. Cut this paper rectangle into multiple triangles and PROVE the volume is the same.
I’m an engineer and always struggled with math. It is mostly the teaching methods causing the disconnect.
But, but the Earth is flat…. A globe solves so many perception issues and it a crime they are not common anymore. Any flight to Europe I have taken has gone over Labrador/Newfoundland. If you have a globe and string this is intuitive.
I don’t know if Mr. Trump has a subscription to HBO Max but maybe an intern in the OEOB can show him on their iPad.
“Are you saying the map is wrong?”
“West Wing” S2E16
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OH1bZ0F3zVU
Mind blown. Thanks!
http://www.gcmap.com/ is a great tool to plot Great Circle routes.
It’s focus is air routes, but almost all ports have an airport nearby and at transoceanic scales, that’s close enough.
“In other news, Jason wrote a Cold Start where he mentioned that the Esso gas station chain gets its name from Standard Oil. “Esso” is basically just a phonetic spelling for “S.O.,” which is neat.”
To me, this is an example of how much of what one “knows” is incorrect. Years ago, I made the acquaintance of a retired ESSO employee from the UK. He told me that ESSO stood for European Subsidiary of Standard Oil. My superficial research indicates that Jason is correct.
That would be similarly confusing because some parts of the US still have Esso stations…or they did until just a few years ago. Similarly, it was only last year that I learned that a lot of people think Gulf Oil was named after the Persian Gulf. Plausible assumption for an international audience. Q8 petrol stations are named for…wait for it…Kuwait.
Also, Elf Oil is not related to elf cosmetics and my wife is sick of me making that comment every time we pass Ulta. And neither company is even run by elves!
For an interesting history read ‘Titan: The Life of John D Rockefeller” by Ron Chernow. Goes in depth about the development of the oil industry in the US.
You want to see corruption on a monumental scale it’s all been done before the current clown posse. Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Jay Gould, JP Morgan, The Warburgs, “The Man Who Made Wall Street: Anthony J Drexel” Dan Rottenburg et-al
Some great history on the early development and growth of America.
Actually the book about no corruption would be a smaller list.
They never got past the dust jacket when they were planning that book. The intended author did take off with the advance, as would have been expected.
Very small, the tiniest you’ve ever seen, you wouldn’t believe how tiny.
I believe only Keebler and Santas work shop are run by elves. Although there was that small mining consortium awhile back that got caught up in the metoo sexual harassment scenario by some chick called Snow White.
Ah Snow White, the head of the Fairy Tale Cartel, always trying to get her name in the press.
Don’t cross her!
https://youtu.be/b-2fnZfK9Lg?si=2Nh8J-W6qLCFdKTa
These facts are all part of what has become known as the “Keebler Conspiracy”. Elves secretly rule the world from the base of a massive tree. Don’t tell anyone!
So close! I’m comfortable with the misspelling as plausible deniability.
“Also, Elf Oil is not related to elf cosmetics and my wife is sick of me making that comment every time we pass Ulta. And neither company is even run by elves!”
Omg, I now have some fake history to joke with my wife with. 😀
A couple of years ago, I told her that the rapper Cardi B’s name is shorthand for Cardiovascular Bronchitis. She believed me for a hot minute.
The first act of the linked this american life episode encapsulates this notion perfectly: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/293/transcript
Thanks for this, it’s great. And this reference is exceptional:
https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html
I would think so because if it was European subsidiary of Standard Oil they would not have ESSO stations in the US. And they did.
Being from Northeast Ohio about 20 min from Youngstown, Arby’s always held a special place compared to the other fast foods. The one in my hometown still had the big neon cowboy hat until 2017!
There is one in my area that still has it. At least as of last year, I haven’t been by it in a few years.
Hell yeah!
Youngun’s today probably are equally unaware of what KFC originally meant.
Knife Fight Club!
The first rule of Knife Fight Club…
11 jabs and slices!
The Ninja’s Secret Recipe
17 for the secret herbs and spices. Although I never believed you can get 17 guys called Herb to keep a secret. Tell me I’m wrong
You’re wrong.
(It’s easy, when 16 of those Herbs are dead.)
It’s only 12 guys named Herb, the other 5 are the Spice Girls
Klan Food Club
When you’re in Canada you can swing by the PFK
This may be too hard to visualize, but here’s my “easy” way to think about a great circle route. Break out the high school geometry…
The Earth is a sphere (spheroid anyway). Now a flat plane (like a sheet of paper) is defined by 3 points. So imagine a plane cutting through the Earth defined by: the center of the Earth, the ship/plane origin location, and the destination location. Unless the origin and the destination are on the equator, it will be tilted away from the equator.
The line where the plane intersects the sphere (the surface of the Earth) is the great circle route.
Easy examples:
two points on the equator, and the plane will basically intersect the equator all the way around, and all routes will be along the equator.
Two points in northern hemisphere on opposite sides of the Earth? The plane will basically cut vertically through the north pole, indicating a route over the pole.
Oh, found an image:
https://slideplayer.com/slide/14249822/89/images/7/Great+Circle+Largest+possible+circle+on+a+sphere.jpg
Blame’er on Mercat’er.
Now you’re just projecting.
Another way to do it to use a globe and a string. Hold one end on one location and then move your other hand to the second location, letting out string as you go but holding it tight enough to stay taught. The “straight” line this forms over the curved surface is essentially the great circle route.
It’s not 100% accurate (most globes are spherical, and the Earth bulges out a bit at the equator due to the spin), but it’s close enough.
Okay seriously here when you go from ocean to ocean in the Panama Canal why are 2 oceans at different heights, requires all those locks. Water usually seeks the lowest level and since all oceans are connected why are they different heights?
The oceans are the same heights (tides not withstanding). The issue is, there’s essentially a mountain range between them (I’m exaggerating a bit – the shipping lane is only 85 feet above sea level, but you get the idea) with a nice big lake. They use the water from that lake and gravity to fill the locks to raise the ships enough so they can make it “over the hump”.
Why not just dig a channel 85 ft deep all the way across? Because the full length of the canal is about 50 miles. Not to mention tidal effects would give you some nasty currents and erosion issues to contend with.
An oblate spheroid, tyvm 🙂
Yup.
Which means the best shortest path will track slightly more North, given the smaller polar radius, than it would on an actual sphere.
/Or more South in the southern hemisphere.
In my quest to become an oblate spheroid in human form, I can assure you that a zig-zag is actually the shortest distance between two pubs
To link the Raffle Bros and Esso, in Ohio while I was growing up, we bought Sohio gasoline – Standard Oil of Ohio. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil_Company_%28Ohio%29
Edit: Raffel
Didn’t know about the great circle route until the comments in the shipping story. Flying across the Atlantic, I thought the route was designed around the ability to track the aircraft with land stations. Seems that it is the other way around. It also explains why the Titanic was so far north. I love the commentariat here.
Huh! I didn’t know that about either Esso or Arby’s. Thanks, Autopian!
I should read more of Jason’s morning cold start wisdom and *and* Mercedes’ evening knowledge drops 🙂
Just a couple days ago I learned it was Ving Rhames doing the “We have the meats” voiceover. It was the most middling piece of news I could enjoy with mild surprise.
Time to call up a couple of beef-chewing Autopians to get medieval on some sandwiches.
The Gimp is hungry.
And Arby’s had H. Jon Benjamin (voice of Archer and Bob from Bob’s Burgers) for a while.
Maybe Ving and H. Jon could do a buddy cop movie…
Pulp Fiction but with Sterling Archer
The best roast beef sandwiches are made with a pair of pliers and a blowtorch.
😀
No the Best roast beef sandwich is a Philly Cheese Steak. It’s Beef it’s roasted before being grilled and it’s marvelous
Well for many years when most stores had the huge hat sign out front their slogan was America’s Roast Beef, Yes Sir. So they kind of perpetuated the thought that RB stood for Roast Beef, not Raffel Bros.
100% agree, they at least leaned into the pun at some point, so I also grew up in the 80s-90s thinking it was intentional, not just coincidental.
They could have named it Raffel’s, which would have been equally successful.
I’ll recycle my joke from the thread, but the real Raffel is the 1-in-5 chance of getting food poisoning. Kidding, but it definitely leaves you in suspense, kind of like…a Jack-in-the-Box?
That’s a bit like the old “but other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?”
Too soon, but very clever humor!
Raffel House, maybe? Or am I thinking of something else?
Waffle House, Raffel House, Roast Beef and Waffles like Roscoes Chicken and Waffles. Invented a new dish and a new franchise.
The legal team at Raffles Hotel would like a word.
https://www.raffles.com/
I thought it was Arfy’s.
I only went back when they started carrying lamb for gyros.
Those gyros are criminally under appreciated. Got me going back to Arby’s after a 20-year hiatus. Not the real deal, but close enough. More authentic than anything at Taco Bell.