Tag: International

DHL USA restarts

Posted by | Dec 17, 2007 | |

DHL’s losses in the United States appear to be deepening and the express carrier is looking closely at the entire operation even as it struggles with its major North American air service provider, ABX Air.

DHL and ABX Air agreed to binding arbitration last month to settle a financial dispute between the two operators, a dispute that bared the enmity between the businesses and the direction of their operations.

But DHL is concerned with larger issues, including a sharp decline in its air express business in North America over the last year that helped drag down overall profits at parent Deutsche Post World Net in the third quarter. DPWN Chairman Klaus Zumwinkle told analysts in Germany last month the company must look at how to “restart the whole thing” next year, but he rejected any idea that DHL would scale back in the face of problems in the United States.

The company last month reported a 4.6 percent drop in express revenue in the Americas in the first nine months of 2007, including a 6.6 percent decline in the third quarter. The U.S. air express market generally has been in decline in recent years, and volume for key competitors FedEx and UPS in that area has been flat.

In the meantime, DHL is trying to work out its problems with ABX. Their rift deepened in recent months when ABX added new aircraft for its charter and leasing business outside the DHL contract, and ABX then rejected a takeover overture from DHL’s other sub-service air operator, ASTAR Air Cargo.

ABX this fall bought another freighter airline, Cargo Holdings International, boosting its non-DHL business and along the way making ABX a tougher takeover target.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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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.”

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