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Courier firms learn to adapt to keep business moving forward

Posted by | May 13, 2007 | |

Jim Hardenbrook hefted six boxes of records out of the back of his pickup, setting them on a hand cart in the parking lot of a doctors’ building on Spokane’s lower South Hill.

The 58-year-old wheeled the cart through the lobby and navigated to a room filled with records at the Northwest OB-GYN office.

“It’s Jumpin’ Jimmy,” one of the clinic employees exclaimed.

Hardenbrook is the founder and lone employee of Jumpin’ Jimmy’s, a fledgling delivery and courier outfit. Using the slogan “You call, we jump!,” Hardenbrook makes runs for food and office supplies for a handful of Spokane medical and accounting offices, and he shuttles records between clinics.

While the advent of fax machines was supposed to make couriers obsolete two decades ago, courier companies have adapted, said Bob DeCaprio, executive director of the Messenger Courier Association of the Americas. Fax and e-mail technology has affected single-document delivery, but couriers are branching out into transporting large freight, machine parts, pharmaceuticals, medical test results and human organs, he said.

Hardenbrook may be one of the newest additions to the region’s courier industry, but he’s not alone. He received one of 16 new business licenses granted to couriers by the city of Spokane in the last two years, according to city documents.

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Argentina: DHL grows 100% in five years locally

Posted by | May 13, 2007 | |

DHL was founded back in 1969 by Messrs Dalsey, Hillblom and Lynn of the US; thirty years later, it became part of the Deutsche Post World Net group with a world turnover of around Euro 60bil. DHL’s express delivery and logistics services are available in 220 countries. In Argentina, it has invested USD 40mil and has been run by Norberto Lovaglio for the last six years (the executive was also made regional vice-president for Hispano-America earlier this year).
Locally, DHL has extended its international courier system and has begun working with local domestic post. Over the last five years, DHL’s Argentinian operations have expanded 101%: starting off in the year 2000, it had a 27% market share and it now has 50% of the market. The firm can be expected to try to buy up other operations soon but it does not, according to Lovaglio, plan to bid for Correo Argentina if the latter’s reprivatisation is called.

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Lifeline for post offices threatened with closure

Posted by | May 13, 2007 | |

When the elderly postmistress in the Kent village of Sutton Valence decided to sell up in 1986, Gary Coyle was probably not on her list of target buyers.

Having left a tough comprehensive school in Northampton at the age of 15 without any qualifications, he became a chef and began an extraordinary journey. It took him from the Queen Eleanor hotel in Northampton to a head chef at the Mark Warner company, cooking at the exclusive ski resorts of Verbier and Meribel.

But after catering, he became attracted to the mail business when the village post office went up for sale near to the home of his in-laws. That was more than 20 years ago. He has never looked back, but many other postmasters have not found the going so easy.

As the only shop in the village, his business is thriving, but other rural post offices are not so lucky. About 2,500 are under threat of closure and Coyle is now leading a mission to save them.

He is aware that it will not be an easy task. The 14,200-strong post-office network loses about Pounds 4m a week and is propped up only by government subsidy.

Post offices that make money tend to be the larger ones in busy urban areas.

Coyle has tried a post-office initiative before, and failed – the Postmasternetwork that aimed to boost the average income of a sub-postmaster by Pounds 5,000 a year by finding new revenue streams. When he pulled the plug on the operation in January, he cleared all its debts, but lost Pounds 100,000 of his own cash in the process. That venture was backed by high-profile City figures, who prefer not to divulge their identities.

Coyle remains undeterred. He has now teamed up with Mail Boxes Etc, part of United Parcel Service (UPS), the international courier-services giant, in a plan to set up new post-office franchises under the Mail Boxes name.

Mail Boxes already has 105 post offices in the UK and Ireland but is desperate to expand. Coyle is leading the initiative on their behalf and being paid a retainer.

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Post chief in GBP 1.2bn threat

Posted by | May 13, 2007 | |

Royal Mail is threatening to freeze GBP 1.2bn in crucial investments if its employees vote next month for a national strike.

Faced by a rapidly shrinking market and growing competition, the postal service is determined to end antiquated working practices.

But an all-out strike, the first for ten years, would have a devastating effect by further boosting competition from private companies that are soon expected to handle one in five letters and parcels.

The confrontation comes as Trade and Industry Secretary Alistair Darling confirms plans to close 2,500 small post offices.

The postal workers’ union has already rejected a pay offer of 2.5% or a GBP 600 lump sum payment for the year and is instead demanding a 27% rise and a shorter working week. Royal Mail chief executive Adam Crozier says he will not go ahead with the company’s five-year investment plan agreed in February unless 130,000 workers agree to management’s ‘final’ offer, which is conditional on changes in working practices.

This means that giant sophisticated sorting machines, which offer the key to major productivity gains, will not be put into main sorting offices.

Even if the unions agree to the package, about 40,000 jobs are expected to go during the upgrades. Royal Mail warns more jobs could be lost after a prolonged dispute.

The company is prepared to announce a sharp drop in its annual operating profits for the year ending March 31 compared with profits of GBP 355m the year before. In the past half-year, profits slumped 86% to GBP 22m.

The Communications Workers Union will start balloting members this week and the result is expected to be announced on June 7.

Royal Mail believes winning this battle is vital to its survival. It sees changes in working conditions as essential, particularly ending early-morning shifts, traditionally starting before 6am, when workers are given an allowance but there is no mail to sort.

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Axe falls on thousands of post offices

Posted by | May 13, 2007 | |

The government will this week announce the closure of 2,500 post offices across the country as part of plans to stem losses of GBP 4m a week across the 14,000 strong network.

Trade and Industry Secretary Alistair Darling will release the government’s response to a six-month consultation on the network, indicating where offices will be lost and what measures will be taken to support those that are left.
At the same time, the Communication Workers Union is preparing to launch a ballot for strike action across its 140,000 membership at Royal Mail in a dispute over pay. The union plans to issue notification of the ballot on Tuesday if talks with Royal Mail on the current 2.5 per cent offer on Monday fail to reach a breakthrough.

There are also plans for a ballot among staff at main Crown post offices over plans to move 85 offices into WH Smith stores, while members at Post Office Cash Services, the division that handles and transports money from branches, are threatening a ballot over pay as well. A union source said there could be strikes across the mail and postal sector.

A spokesman for the National Federation of Sub Postmasters said half the government closures were expected in rural areas and half in towns and cities.
The government has indicated that if the post office network were a purely commercial organisation, it would run only 4,000 branches. However, it accepts that it also has a social role.

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Irish postal network faces collapse

Posted by | May 12, 2007 | |

Rural leaders were warned yesterday that the post office network could collapse if there is a further fall in the volume of social welfare payments they transact.

Pat McCann of the Irish Postmasters Union told the Irish Rural Link conference in Cavan that social welfare transactions represent the single biggest customer for these post offices.

But, he said, the Department of Social and Family Affairs is pursuing an agenda that will see more and more social welfare recipients having to access their payments at a bank rather than at the post office.

“The prospect for many offices is not good but it is salvageable if the public use its influence with those in power and encourage their local communities to use the post office regularly,” he said.

Mr McCann, a postmaster at Fairymount in Co Roscommon, said there is a mistaken belief that the postmaster or postmistress is a paid official of An Post.

The reality is that they get paid solely on the basis of every transaction conducted in the post office. The less customers, the less income they have. Yet, all the overheads remain the same.

According to the Irish Postmasters Union the earnings of some of its members are as low as euro 8,000 per year, with an average yearly income of €16,000, working an average 50-hour week.

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Dell drops UPS and will use rivals

Posted by | May 12, 2007 | |

Dell has stopped relying on UPS, the world’s biggest package deliverer, to handle its box deliveries in the United States.

Instead, Dell is turning to UPS shipping rivals DHL and FedEx. The move cuts into Sandy Springs-based UPS’ dealings with one of its biggest customers. But it is a boost for DHL’s efforts to grow its presence in the U.S.

UPS spokesman Norman Black said Dell and UPS “were simply unable to reach an agreement for pricing for renewal of this particular contract.”

None of the companies involved would disclose the dollar value of the deals. Dell shipped 20.5 million personal computers for the U.S. market last year, according to IDC, which tracks data about the technology industry. That represented just over half Dell’s worldwide shipment of PCs.

But Dell’s market share has been slipping, and it has been looking for ways to streamline its operations and shave costs for everything from manufacturing to logistics.

UPS had been the carrier for virtually all of Dell’s U.S. package deliveries, Black said. While that ended effective April 1, UPS remains Dell’s primary package deliverer outside the U.S. and will continue to handle logistics issues for the computer maker, he said.

He declined to say where Dell had ranked among UPS’ largest clients. He said the reduction in business between the companies is not a material event from a regulatory financial accounting standpoint.

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Growth strategy based on mini-centers

Posted by | May 12, 2007 | |

The national chain believes the way to grow is by shrinking the size of its stores, and by planting these new mini-centers in many more locations in North Jersey and around the country.

The office services and shipping retailer is aggressively seeking 1,800-square-foot storefronts in new strip centers in North Jersey as part of a plan to place locations closer to its small-business customers. The new stores are roughly one-third the size of existing FedEx Kinko’s stores, and far smaller than the 8,400-square-foot store in Paramus.

The first of this new breed of FedEx Kinko’s stores arrived in North Jersey last month, at 120 Route 17 north in East Rutherford.

The company is preparing to open similar stores in Roseland and Rockaway next month. FedEx Kinko’s is seeking to open five to six more locations in Bergen County, said Jeff Lagowitz, a partner in Fort Lee-based Metro Commercial, the real estate firm that is FedEx Kinko’s exclusive representative in North Jersey.

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