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The millions of containers that move through the Port of Los Angeles each year pretty much look the same with the exception of the name of a company emblazoned on each side, belying the assortment of contents within.
However, one of the more colorful and biggest (in terms of volume) commodities hidden away in this season's containers, are toys.
That's right, this year's toy phenomenon, like last year's Pokemon or another year's Beanie Babies, or, even further back, Transformer robots, has begun the journey towards the shelves of Toys R Us, Wal Mart and Target, or onto the Internet for the second full season of "e-tailing."
And as the peak Christmas season picks up, the influx of these containers is increasing, and to the busy folks handling the twenty- and forty-foot boxes, the idea is to get them moved as quickly through the intermodal network as possible, in order to avoid a disaster like 1997's system crash.
In 1999, the port handled 491,000 total metric tons of toy imports, with China comprising 442,000 metric tons of the total. The port is forecasting 14 percent growth of its toy imports by the end of 2000.
Al Fierstine, the port's business development manager, and a 16-year veteran at both the Port of L.A. and Maersk, said Los Angeles started hitting its stride with imported toys about 15 years ago, and since then, he said the shifts in source countries have gone from Japan to Southeast Asia to mainland China.
"We are the Southern California hub [for toys] from a carrier's standpoint with the benefits of lower costs from high volumes. This is a great one-stop shopping area; not just with intermodal connections, but with our domestic cargo base," he said.
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