Logistics gets the celebrity treatment

It's a given that unless someone works in or has some connection with freight transportation, warehousing, or material handling, they're pretty much oblivious to what goes on behind the scenes in these areas. So it was surprising indeed to happen across a couple of instances of television and film stars connecting with our industry.

The Irish-born film star Liam Neeson has been quoted as saying, "Some mornings you wake up and think, 'Gee, I look handsome today'. Other days I think, what am I doing in the movies? I wanna go back to Ireland and drive a forklift." He wasn't joking: Neeson drove a forklift at a Guinness factory when he was younger. The actor last year told a British newspaper that a fellow driver (whom he described as a "guy who could make a forklift truck speak. He was so brilliant at what he did") encouraged him to follow his dream and become an actor.

A Netflix ad campaign promoting new episodes of the television series "Arrested Development" includes the show's oddball family posing inside a bright orange ISO shipping container. Stacks of ocean containers and a crane tower behind the tag line, "Now the story of a family that couldn't be contained." An online "poster" for the new season (which Netflix picked up after the series was dropped by Fox) features hidden links to episode previews and invites you to "Ship the container to your friends!" via Facebook, Twitter, and other networking sites. The interactive poster can be found here.