Washington CEO, 9/98

The Port of Seattle’s unique position to link the public and private sectors may be nowhere better employed than with the Boomerang Box. Conceived as a fun, educational way to mark the completion of Terminal 5 expansion, the Boomerang Box since has become much more.

Officials from the port and American President Lines (APL), the shipping line expanding at Terminal 5, were looking for a way to build awareness about the terminal at West Seattle’s doorstep when they came up with the idea of painting a cargo container and tracking its progress.

Known for its sophisticated cargo tracking system, APL saw the project as a way to give students a window into its operations and teach them about trade. Students would follow a container filled with real cargo on the Internet (www.apl.com/boomerangbox) as it journeyed across oceans to foreign seaports and across the country to markets on the East Coast.

Students from six different West Seattle schools designed oversized postage stamps to decorate the sides of the 40-foot container. Pandas, Japanese temples, images of the Pacific Northwest and trading commodities now adorn the container known as the Boomerang Box.

The box’s Web site is a collaboration between the port, APL and its customers. The site includes maps of the containers’s route, a diary of its voyages and profiles of trade workers, among them, Lanny McGrew, the crane operator, Cabo, the customs dog, and Liz Thomas, director of trade, commerce and international affairs for King County. The profiles and many other teaching tools on the site were developed by the Magnusson Partnership, a trade education initiative of King County councilman Greg Nickels that receives financial support from the port and the county.

APL’s customers get involved when the shipping line asks them if they want to move cargo in the Boomerang Box. One customer who took the invitation and ran with it was Potlatch, the paper products company. Potlatch flew six West Seattle High School students and two teachers to Lewiston, Idaho, where they spend two days learning about Potlatch’s business, then watched as the Boomerang Box was loaded with milk carton stock, loaded on a truck and transferred to a rail car. The same kids were back in Seattle to see the box loaded onto a ship.

Most businesses welcome the chance to tell about what they do, but often lack a medium, says Molly Tennis, a port community project manager who works on the Boomerang Box.

“When you present business with a unique project like this, a vehicle for them to reach out, they do it,” Tennis says.

Tina Montgomery, who manages the Boomerang Box project for APL, tells of one customer who kept calling to ask if a shipment of the company’s cargo could travel the celebrity container. The company went on to develop a math lesson around loading a container by weight and volume.

After hearing about the Boomerang Box at a recent maritime lunch, Weyerhaeuser and Eddie Bauer representatives asked APL how they could participate.

“For APL, this is an incredible opportunity to work with customers in a unique way,” Montgomery says.