Cost-effective, versatile and environmentally-friendly, steel drums are a favored means of secure packaging as they can handle temperature and other environmental extremes without leakage. The 55-gallon container is a descendant of the wooden barrel used as early as the 3rd century AD. In fact, the ancient craft of barrel practiced by coopers making water-tight, wooden vessels held together by nothing more than the hoops that surround them continued into modern times.