Shareowners of UPS elected a Board of Directors for a one-year term and ratified the appointment of Deloitte & Touche LLP as the company’s independent registered public accountants.
Ten directors stood for election to the Board of Directors and all were overwhelmingly elected. The appointment of Deloitte & Touche to serve as the company’s independent auditors for 2007 also was ratified.
Read MoreWhen 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.
Read MoreDell 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.
Read MoreIndia Logistics sector: 20% Growth
Read MoreWebplus, Inc., a leading provider of small business solutions, announced today the release of Shipping Sidekick v2.0 (www.shippingsidekick.com). Shipping Sidekick v2.0 features free side-by-side comparison of USPS and DHL shipping rates and transit times as well as those of FedEx and UPS for paid users. Shipping Sidekick v2.0 also features improved navigation as well as numerous other improvements.
Shipping Sidekick saves eBay sellers, small businesses or anyone shipping packages time and money. When sending a package, users simply enter the destination and package information to quickly and easily retrieve the published shipping rate and delivery time of each shipping company allowing the user to choose the shipper with the best price for the delivery time needed. Published rates from UPS, FedEx, USPS, and DHL are provided on one screen, side-by-side. Each delivery company’s ground, rush or priority, and overnight shipping rates are included. Savings of USD 3-USD 5 per package are common and a free shipping scale is offered with select memberships.
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