And one of the most important things you've probably learned is that there are thousands of ports - in the United States and all over the world - and that cargo travels swiftly between these many ports.

In the United States alone, there are:

• Over 95,000 miles of open shoreline, and
• Over 350 individual ports.

Each year, over 6 million loaded cargo containers enter these U.S. ports, carried on more than 7,500 ships that make over 50,000 calls on different ports each year. That's a lot of shipping traffic!

A container ship traveling to the Los Angeles port, for instance, can be carrying goods from half a dozen different cities in Asia or the Middle East, or from Europe, or Central or South America. In fact, a single container ship loaded with more than 5,000 containers can be carrying goods from almost that many different places!

So, how do you keep container shipping safe? How do you keep ports and people safe?

These questions have become very important during the last several years due to the war on terrorism. We want to keep goods and cargo moving. But we also want our citizens and people around the world to be safe.

The U.S. has always had rules to regulate what kinds of cargo could come in to the country. After September 11th, the U.S. Customs Service, which enforces these rules, worked hard to develop new programs that would keep shipping safe.

One of these rules is called the 24 Hour Rule. It requires that any shipper who is bringing goods into the U.S. through an ocean port must send the Customs Service a complete list of everything on the ship (the contents of every single cargo container!) 24 hours before this cargo is loaded in the last foreign port the ship will visit before it comes to the United States.

This rule has required shipping companies such as APL to collect more detailed information about the work they do than ever before. But it's all part of keeping trade moving around the world and keeping people safe from the threat of terrorism.

To learn more about the U.S. Customs Service's 24 Hour Rule and other security programs, follow this link: http://www.customs.gov/xp/cgov/home.xml

For a Boomerang Box overview of the Customs Service, click here.

And to follow along as APL's Robin Kirby figures out how to make sure APL does its part, click here.

Check out past Trade Topics entries!