BBC’s “The Box”, the year long experiment that explores globalization and world trade, has made its way into the States via the Port of Los Angeles.  According to the BBC website, the box arrived in Los Angeles on Wednesday full of consumer goods including tape measures and fashion accessories.  The Box is continuing its journey on rail to New Jersey via Chicago.

The Box’s trip started in Southampton, UK last September, transporting Scotch Whiskey to Shanghai.  During that first voyage, the Box passed through the pirate infested waters of The Gulf of Aden.  gCaptain has actually received unconfirmed reports that a group of pirates did board the vessel and searched the cargo, but was quickly released when no rum was found.

In all seriousness BBC tells of the real problems facing The Box:

But the biggest challenge has come from the meltdown in the world economy.

For instance, the charter rates for container ships have plummeted by as much as 60% or more.

A few years ago shipping companies in South Korea, Italy or Scandinavia were enjoying an unprecedented boom.

There simply wasn’t enough capacity to ship all the cars, washing machines and lap top computers the world was snapping up.

The shipping companies built new ships, more expensive and bigger then ever before – now they don’t need them.

For now we are just going to watch and see where the Box will be headed next.  By they way, a FREE gCaptain t-shirt goes to the first reader to send us an ORIGINAL picture of the Box in the US.

It is a project which plans to deliver content for television, radio and online audiences – telling the individual stories behind what makes the global economy tick.

The Box will hopefully reach the US, Asia, the Middle East , Europe and Africa and when it does BBC correspondents will be there to report on who’s producing goods and who’s consuming them.

From the start of the voyage in Southampton this journey will be a real one and whilst we are controlling some aspects of the process for logistical reasons the story it tells will be a truly representative one painting a picture of what globalisation really means.

The experiment is named after the book by Marc Levinson titled “The Box“, which is a great story of how the shipping container changed the face of world trade.

Links:

BBC News

Tracking “The Box”

Marc Levinson’s “The Box” on Amazon.com