Hey,

Most people in shipping know what a chemical tanker is. Fewer know what a parcel tanker is and why the difference matters.

A chemical tanker moves bulk liquid chemicals. A parcel tanker moves multiple different liquid chemicals simultaneously, in separate tanks, without contamination, on a scheduled liner service. It's the difference between a bus and a taxi — except the bus carries 25 different passengers who can never touch each other, in a vessel designed to handle substances that range from mildly corrosive to extremely hazardous.

Stolt-Nielsen didn't just build parcel tankers. It invented them. Jacob Stolt-Nielsen conceived the concept in New York in the late 1950s, built the first purpose-designed vessel, and created an entirely new segment of the shipping industry in the process. Sixty-six years later, the family is still at the helm. The company operates the world's largest parcel tanker fleet, generates $2.89 billion in annual revenue, and moves the liquid chemicals that underpin global manufacturing — mostly without anyone outside the industry noticing.