1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a positioning cone or lock for positioning containers loaded on board a ship and stacked one upon another.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In transporting a lot of containers by ship, if they were merely put one upon another, the upper containers might fall owing to the rolling of the ship. To avoid this, positioning cones or locks are usually set between the lower containers and their supporting surface and between the upper containers and the lower containers. For this purpose, containers are usually provided with holes for engagement with positioning cones at four corners of their top and bottom surfaces. The positioning cones are adapted to be inserted into these holes to position the containers.
With conventional positioning cones of this type, it was necessary to turn a lever to cause the positioning cone to engage the containers after having inserted the cones into the holes in the upper and lower containers. Therefore, it was time-consuming to set up the system. Also, if containers are stacked one upon another in a lot of tiers, it is difficult to operate the lever of the positioning cones at higher tiers above the floor. If the lever were not securely operated due to this difficulty, the upper containers might fall.