So how do those containership ports work?

 Surely those big steel containers don't have paperwork showing where they need to go on the outside of the container somewhere.  Would not a few rough seas wash such paperwork overboard, or at least get it so wet as to be unreadable?  How do the crane operators, truckers, and railroad crews know where to send each container?  Clever computer programs that display the bill of lading for just entering the container serial number?  Do containers have serial numbers painted on the outside?  You would think they do, but I have never gotten close enough to see them. 

Ideally the crane operator would pull a container off the ship and drop it on a truck or a train and get it out of the port right then and there.  If they pile the containers on the ground in the port that slows things down.  The containers piled on the ground have to be picked up and loaded on trucks or trains sooner or later.  Which takes as much crane time as unloading them from the ship in the first place.  Faster is to unload the containers off the ship right onto trucks or trains and get the containers clean out of the port right then and there.   

I am thinking that a long train of double stack flat cars, pulling slowly along side the ship as the crane unloads is the way to go.  Only drawback is the train only goes to one place, so all the containers wind up somewhere like Salt Lake City from which they get sorted out and shipped to their owners.

And despite what union leaders say, the port can move more containers if it runs three shifts and operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.