Year: 2007

DHL prepares for holiday season peak on

Posted by | Dec 17, 2007 | |

DHL enters the peak day of December 17 – known to those in red and yellow DHL uniforms as “Super Monday” – with 10,000 team members strong at its primary U.S. hub as well as tens of thousands of others across the country to efficiently move packages through the DHL network. Overall, DHL expects to move over 14.5 million packages across the globe on Super Monday.

DHL expects a 50 percent increase over its average daily volume during the first three quarters of this year, as it will deliver approximately 2.5 million packages and pick up 2.3 million packages across the United States.

DHL has taken the following steps to manage shipments during the peak of this 2007 holiday season:
• DHL has added more than 440 daily truck routes to its regular network schedule, a 25 percent increase over its average daily ground linehaul capacity.
• Nearly 10,000 staff members, including hundreds of seasonal and temporary workers, are working around the clock at DHL’s principal air and ground hub in Wilmington, OH, to ensure customer packages reach their destinations in time for the holidays.
• The workforce has also increased at DHL’s 18 other U.S. regional sort centers by 50 percent.
• The average daily volume for DHL@home, DHL’s business-to-consumer service in partnership with the U.S. Postal Service, will more than double during the month of December, driven by online retailers, catalog companies and other business-to-consumer shipments.
• During the month of December, DHL expects to double the volume of packages handled through DHL drop boxes and its nationwide retail network of DHL Authorized Shipping Centers®, including OfficeMax® locations and independent mail and parcel centers.
• During the month of December, DHL projects a 10 percent increase in customer shipments processed online and a 30 percent increase in online tracking requests over last season.

Read More

DHL, UNICEF, Sanofi and HPIC team up to deliver life-saving vaccines to children of Uzbekistan

Posted by | Dec 17, 2007 | |

On Monday 10 December, 2007, the last shipment of more than 750,000 life-saving vaccines was loaded on an airplane bound for Uzbekistan, in the final chapter of an extraordinary humanitarian effort in Canada spearheaded by UNICEF, sanofi-aventis Group, one of the country’s leading medical aid agencies, and the logistics division of DHL to provide badly needed medicines to the children of Uzbekistan.

Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccines division of sanofi-aventis, donated the single doses of vaccine to Health Partners International of Canada (HPIC), a Canadian medical aid agency dedicated to improving access to healthcare and medicine in the developing world. HPIC is providing the vaccines to UNICEF, the world’s leading children’s humanitarian agency, for use this winter in a vaccination program for the children of Uzbekistan.

DHL discounted the transportation cost of 26 temperature controlled containers

The vaccine will be used to immunize children under the age of two against pertussis (whooping cough), diphtheria, tetanus and polio. Uzbekistan’s Ministry of Health covered all in-field transportation costs and supplied sufficient quantities of syringes and safety boxes. DHL, a long time corporate partner of UNICEF, discounted the transportation cost of 26 temperature controlled containers, and leveraged its unmatched global network and delivery expertise to manage the movements of the precious cargo.

Jeremy Shrubbs, Director Business Development, Lifescience, DHL Global Forwarding, Canada, said: “Because the vaccines had to remain in a range between +2°C to +8°C at all times, this shipment was especially challenging. As a result, we engaged LifeConEx, a joint venture with DHL Global Forwarding and Lufthansa Cargo, to ensure the vaccines were safeguarded and maintained complete integrity at each step of the journey.”

Read More

UPS's Brown Sleighs Gear Up For Busiest Week

Posted by | Dec 17, 2007 | |

UPS today begins its busiest week of the year for package deliveries, with a crescendo expected on Wednesday when more than 22 million packages will be delivered on that one day worldwide.

For the Brown “sleighs” helping Santa, that’s more than 250 deliveries every second.

The nimbleness of the UPS global package delivery network enables the company to easily accommodate these annual spikes in package volume.

Other key facts that describe the enormity of the UPS holiday push:

– While Wednesday, Dec. 19, is the busiest day for deliveries of all packages, Friday, Dec. 21, is the busiest day for deliveries of UPS air express packages. UPS will deliver 5.6 million air packages on that day globally – more than two-and-a-half times the normal daily volume.
– UPS expects more than 150 million online package tracking requests during this week and nearly 32 million on Wednesday, Dec. 19, alone.
– UPS once again has become one of the holiday season’s top employers of choice, having added roughly 60,000 seasonal employees.
– UPS’s ground fleet of 94,542 package cars, vans, and tractors has expanded by approximately 7,000 vehicles.
– UPS Airlines, the ninth largest in the world, is adding 423 more flights per day during this week than an average day.

Attention procrastinators: UPS will accept Next Day Air® packages on Friday, Dec. 21, for delivery on Monday, Dec. 24, well in time for the big day.

Read More

UK Ministers announce postal review

Posted by | Dec 17, 2007 | |

The Royal Mail’s 350-year monopoly ended at the start of 2006 when other licensed operators were given the right to collect and deliver mail.

Strike action by postal workers this summer damaged Royal Mail’s reputation.

Business Secretary John Hutton said retaining the universal postal service remained a “top priority”.

At the same, ministers announced that Royal Mail chairman Allan Leighton would have his contract extended by a year to March 2009.

Unions criticised Mr Leighton’s handling of a bitter pay dispute earlier this year which, although now resolved, is estimated to have cost Royal Mail more than GBP 200m.

There can be no doubt that the market has evolved with new technologies such as email and text messaging having a huge effect on the way we communicate

Although it has faced increased competition for two years, Royal Mail is still the dominant postal supplier in the UK, with a market share of more than 90 pct.

But the amount of mail it handles has fallen and social changes which have seen more people using email to communicate.

This is a crucial review which will help to shape the future of the postal sector

Terms of review

– Assess impact of market liberalisation
– Look at future market trends
– Consider how to maintain universal service

The review, led by former Ofcom deputy chairman Richard Hooper, will conclude next summer.

Read More

Postcomm welcomes Government review of postal market (UK)

Posted by | Dec 17, 2007 | |

Postcomm, the independent regulator for postal services, welcomes the Government’s review of the UK postal services market, which was announced earlier today.

Postcomm looks forward to cooperating fully with the review which comes at a time of profound change for the market. The regulator’s official submission to the review will be published in due course, but is likely to consider:

– how to put Royal Mail in the best position to increase its efficiency and its flexibility to meet the changing needs of customers and to sustain a universal service which must evolve in the light of social and technological changes;
– how to ensure that new operators are able to offer customers a choice of innovative new services, on a level playing field with Royal Mail (including the same treatment under the VAT regime); and
– the need to allow the regulatory regime to evolve with the changing market and for Postcomm to step back wherever the market is effective in ensuring value for money and choice for customers.

Postcomm chairman Nigel Stapleton said:

“We are pleased the Government’s review will cover all aspects of the market and of Royal Mail’s structure and performance. The forward looking approach can ensure the public continues to benefit from an evolving universal service it values and the market develops to provide innovative, efficient and reliable services that meet the needs of all users.”

Read More

New Research Shows Consumers Value Direct Mail, But Misunderstand Its Environmental Impact

Posted by | Dec 17, 2007 | |

A new survey reveals that consumers value much of the direct mail they receive, but they also dramatically misperceive its true environmental impact. The findings suggest that industry efforts to educate the public will yield an improved perception of mail’s environmental footprint. The survey of 1,000 adults in the US was commissioned by Pitney Bowes and DMNews.

Consistent with other industry studies, consumers in this survey place a high value on the coupons and catalogs they receive in the mail. Mail also helps consumers start and maintain relationships with businesses and nonprofits, with 44 percent of respondents making their first purchase from a business and 33 percent making their first donation to a nonprofit because of a mail piece.

The survey found that negative perceptions of mail’s environmental impact are based on widespread public misunderstandings. For example, only 2 percent of Americans correctly guessed that mail makes up just 2 percent of the nation’s municipal waste, while an astonishing 48 percent believe that mail is half of the content in the nation’s landfills.

Americans also believe, that mail delivery is a major contributor to carbon dioxide emissions. The truth is that mail delivery falls well below many other daily activities in its carbon footprint, such as taking a shower or using household appliances.

The survey suggests that public education will enhance consumer perception of direct mail. For example, more than 70 pct of respondents said it would improve their view of mail if marketers used address correcting software to minimize undeliverable mail. “This is already a widespread practice in the industry, and is highly effective at reducing waste in the mailstream,” said Critelli. “We need to make this more visible to consumers so they understand how our interests converge with theirs.”

Read More

U.S. Postal Service Ready for Busiest Mailing, Delivery Days of the Year

Posted by | Dec 17, 2007 | |

December 17th marks the busiest mailing day of the year for the Postal Service, with nearly 1 billion pieces of mail entering the system, up from an average day’s volume of 703 million pieces. Americans will entrust about 275 million cards and letters with the Postal Service today, more than three times the average daily volume of 82 million.

The National Operations Center (NOC) at headquarters has been tracking mail delivery, volume, air cargo routes and weather daily since Dec. 11 and will continue working round-the-clock until Christmas Day. NOC staff, charts, systems and graphs will be essential in making Wednesday, Dec. 19, successful when postmaster, letter carriers, processing and distribution center staff and retail clerks mark the busiest delivery day of the year.

With 37,000 Post Offices and stations, 55,000 places to purchase stamps and 251,038 delivery routes within its system, the Postal Service is equipped to handle the busiest days of the year, in addition to rain, sleet and snow.

With Christmas fast approaching, the following mailing deadlines are recommended in order for holiday cheer to reach its destination on time:

– First-Class Mail (with stamps) and Priority Mail: Dec. 20
– Express Mail: Dec. 22

The Postal Service is providing a money-back guarantee that all Express Mail sent by Dec. 22 will be delivered by Christmas Day. Gifts sent by Express Mail are automatically insured for USD 100. Express Mail packages and envelopes are available online at usps.com and in Post Office lobbies across the country.

Read More

US Christmas retail spending surpasses USD 22 Billion

Posted by | Dec 17, 2007 | |

According to the latest figures from comScore, e-commerce spending for the first 44 days of the November – December 2007 Christmas season (November 1 – December 14) showed more than USD 22 billion has been spent online during the season-to-date, marking an 18 pct gain versus the corresponding days last year. Monday, December 10 reached USD 881 million in sales (up 33 pct versus last year), registering as the heaviest online spending day of the season and the heaviest online spending day on record. However they expect things to hot up this week.

While the US seems to be calming down certain sites in the UK seem to be going into meltdown. We went to the Argos site to check on our order of IR presents at just after 2pm this afternoon and there was so much traffic it had defaulted to a message that basically said “we are experiencing heavy traffic please ring, email, text or visit the store.” Although the Monday lunchtime news featured a quite empty looking Argos packing centre, perhaps the news spurred on a whole new set of orders. Could this be the solution? Get a web cam in your packing centre and just loop a slow time in the warehouse video and “bingo” extra sales.

Read More

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

P&P Poll

Loading

What's the future of the postal USO?

Thank you for voting
You have already voted on this poll!
Please select an option!



View ResultsHide Results

Post & Parcel Magazine


Post & Parcel Magazine is our print publication, released 3 times a year. Packed with original content and thought-provoking features, Post & Parcel Magazine is a must-read for those who want the inside track on the industry.

Subscribe to the Magazine

 

Pin It on Pinterest