After six months traveling around Asia, the Boomerang Box recently returned to the United States. Its ship, the Alligator Fortune, docked at Seattle’s waterfront on April 12th, and the Boomerang Box was back home. But this was not the end of its journey. It was time for the Boomerang Box to go "intermodal."   Do you know what intermodal means? Intermodal is a term that is used quite often when talking about moving people and goods. Quite simply, it means using different “modes,” or types, of transportation. For the Boomerang Box, it means that the box has left ships behind for a while and will now use other types of transportation — primarily trucks and trains — to travel.   When the Boomerang Box returned to Seattle, it was carrying a load of woodworking machinery from Taiwan for JET Equipment and Tools. The box was lifted off its ship by a crane and then loaded on a truck and driven a short way to JET's warehouse. The box was unloaded there. Then, the box was driven back to Terminal 5, APL’s headquarters on Seattle’s waterfront, where it was cleaned and prepared for a new load.   On April 20th, the box left Seattle again by truck. This time, it was sent to Tacoma, a city 30 miles south of Seattle, and the headquarters of Interstate Distributor Company (IDC). IDC specializes in moving goods by truck and train. IDC works with customers who have goods they need to move and helps them find the best way to get the goods to their destination.   After IDC inspected the Boomerang Box, an IDC driver drove the box to the warehouse of Norvanco International. Norvanco had a load of toys that needed to be delivered to a Toys-R-Us warehouse all the way across the country in New Jersey. Norvanco had asked IDC to arrange for transportation for the toys, and IDC had booked the Boomerang Box for the trip.   At Norvanco's warehouse, Norvanco staff loaded the Boomerang Box with the toys. To celebrate the box's return to Seattle, a group of second graders from Holy Rosary School in West Seattle visited Norvanco to watch as the box was loaded. They had fun watching the forklifts race around the warehouse to pick of boxes of toys and drive them into the Boomerang Box.   Once the Boomerang Box was full, it was locked and sealed. Then, the IDC driver took it to the Union Pacific rail yard near downtown Seattle for the next leg of its journey, the Boomerang Box's first cross-country train trip.   Before going to the rail yard, however, the Boomerang Box took a short detour and visited the students at Pathfinder School in West Seattle. Many of the postage stamps that decorate the Boomerang Box were created by Pathfinder students, and the students wanted a chance to see how their artwork — and the box itself — had made it after six months at sea. It was definitely unusual to see a semi-truck pulling a 40-foot, decorated cargo container drive up to a neighborhood elementary school!   Pathfinder Students Greeting the Boomerang Box   After a short visit at Pathfinder, the Boomerang Box continued on its way to the rail yard. It was lifted onto a train car, double-stacked with another container, and then sent to the East Coast.   Five days and about 3,000 miles later, the Boomerang Box reached APL’s train terminal in Kearny, New Jersey. It had very quickly moved a full load of toys all the way across the USA. It was greeted in Kearny by a group of fourth-graders from a nearby school. Their class had been following the box on the Internet since October, and were very excited to finally get to see the box in person!   The New Jersey fourth-graders noticed a pattern in the different ways trucks and trains are used to move goods inside containers. Have you noticed the pattern too?   Trucks are used mostly for short trips or trips with many stops. The Boomerang Box traveled by truck around the Seattle area to drop off its woodworking machinery and pick up its load of toys. Because a truck carries only one container, the truck driver can easily and quickly get each container to its destination.   Trains, on the other hand, are used mostly for longer trips. Sending the Boomerang Box by train from Seattle to New Jersey was much less expensive than getting a truck driver to drive it all the way across the country. But a mile-long train carrying several hundred double-stacked containers won't be a very good means of transportation if it has to stop all the time. So, trains are used mostly for long distances when few stops are needed. At each stop, many containers are unloaded, and each is then put on a truck to finish its journey. Home Journey Log Trade Topics People Profiles Index Ask the Eagle