Sister-City Log Rolling Project Hits Log Jam
This entry was posted on 5/20/2006 5:01 AM and is filed under International Development.
After months of preparation, five logs were painted and carpeted to be shipped from
La Crosse, Wisconsin to Epinal, France for a summer log rolling
program: the first of its kind in Europe.
The ILRF spent part of the winter researching Overseas Shipping 101.
There's a bit of a learning curve but shipping has become a commodity and the
prices don't vary wildly from company to company. Not
surprisingly, if you ship in
quantity, the price goes down...A LOT. One full shipping container (109
logs) costs the same as
shipping five individual logs! And amazingly,
due to the huge US trade imbalance with Asia, you can ship a full
container
to China for $200!
Things were flowing downstream fairly smoothly when we received a
message from the shipper (one week before ETD) that "western red cedar
is a restricted commodity and requires a special license". (It has
something
to do with its scarcity and concerns about it being logged illegally on Native
lands in Canada and Alaska?!)
We are working with the US Department of Commerce and our congressional representative to expedite things.
Hopefully, some cedar logs will be traveling across the Atlantic soon
and
French children will be log
rolling (trunc du tournez?) by August.
