The amount of container freight is continuously increasing recently, but freight congestion problem frequently occurs at ports due to low efficiency of container crane in transportation and cargo handling. In this paper, a method for designing a fuzzy controller of the container crane system is presented. In this scheme a mathematical model for the system is obtained in state space representation. The response of the proposed fuzzy controller is compared with that of the optimal controller at the same condition. Through the simulation results, the performance of the fuzzy controller was observed better than that of optimal controller in respect of reference change, disturbances and parameter change. The fuzzy controller was also more stable and robust than the optimal controller.