Richard Todorovic had a problem.  Baseball is an Olympic sport, and as everyone knows, the quadrennial games will return to their birthplace in August, bringing athletes and spectators to Athens from around the world.

Problem is, the Greeks don’t know baseball.  Don’t have the right equipment.  Even the dirt in Greece is all wrong for baseball diamonds.  Everything needs to be shipped in from abroad.

“It’s quite an undertaking,” observes Mr. Todorovic, an American from Long Island who works for Schenker, the German trade logistics company.

Under contract with the International Olympic Committee, Schenker is responsible for transporting all manner of stuff to Athens in time for the games – from NBC’s huge array of broadcast gear to much of the athletic equipment with which competitors will go for the gold.

Did you know that Greece levies import duties on dirt?  Like countries everywhere, it imposes tariffs on a lot of things, including professional equipment for sporting events and, yes, the dirt used in constructing baseball diamonds.

Luckily, Mr. Todorovic has been organizing logistics for Schenker – for the Olympics and numerous other international events – for a long time.  He’s learned the tricks of the trade, one of which is a helpful document called an ATA Carnet.

Known as “merchandise passports,” ATA Carnets are customs documents for temporary duty-free, tax-free import of professional equipment, commercial samples and goods displayed at trade shows.  Companies around the world use them to reduce costs and speed global operations.

“It’s a privately run system, since chambers of commerce and other business groups actually issue Carnets,” says Cynthia Duncan, USCIB’s vice president for Carnet operations.  “But we do so in the U.S. under license from the Treasury Department, and the global Carnet system as a whole is administered in cooperation with the World Customs Organization.”

USCIB recently launched a special Athens 2004 page on its website (www.merchandisepassport.org) for users of ATA Carnets.  It’s a checklist of everything you need to know to get your goods in and out of Greece with a minimum of hassle, from the locations of Greek diplomatic missions in the U.S. to contact information for the Athens airport and the local Greek chamber of commerce if problems arise.

Meanwhile, Mr. Todorovic is sitting pretty.  Despite well publicized construction delays elsewhere at the Athens Olympic facilities, the baseball complex is complete.  While he couldn’t avoid import duties on the dirt used to construct the baseball diamonds (they’re staying after the games conclude), he saved a lot of time and money by relying on the merchandise passport for the equipment that returned home.

It’s a dirty job, but somebody has to do it.

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