India Doorstep Trade Service offered by DHL and Standard Bank

In order to save time and administration, DHL Express India and Standard Chartered Bank has launched a Door Step Trade service in those regions that have a concentrated amount of exporters utilizing finance services. No longer will documents have to be couriered to the bank's Foreign office, the documents just have to be scanned by the DHL driver and they will be transmitted directly to the correct office.

I would assume this service will have to be paid for and may only be offered to certain customers however, it is quite innovative and is designed to cut time and red tape in the export finance segmet of logistics. Read full article

Fedex continues to boost it's Asia presence

With DHL, UPS and TNT dominating courier and distribution in the Asia Pacific rim, Fedex has finally made their move to improve their infrastructure and offer upgraded business services to European locations. Lagging behind the other three in brand name recognition by the majority of users in this part of the world, Fedex hopes to boost their presence and hopefully trespass on the DHL/UPS/TNT market share. Read More

FedEx boosts Asia – Europe connection with next-business-day service

UPS Still in the Slow Lane

In 1999, UPS went public and the public as well as private sectors bought in. Now with after 40 acquisitions and large investments in China as well as the 3PL, they have, closed the perceived gaping holes in their global profile. Focusing on Supply Chain and Distribution networks in the last ten years, as well as business services such as the UPS Store, they have come a long way from being just a courier.

It is probably the most well established courier/business logistics company in North America. They are a freight forwarder as well, but these services seem to have been somewhat neglected since forwarding freight requires reliance on extra-company resources such as steamship lines, containers, and airlines. UPS of course is an airline, however they do not commit their aircraft to the normal every day forwarding as their craft have a very high revenue to cost ratio, that only courier revenue provides.

Freight Forwarding also requires an element of entrepreneurship and creativity at the desk level, as there are many milestones of the shipment and conditions that are varied and uncontrollable. It may well be that UPS with it's tight structure and organization of human resources does not lend well to this type of flexibility exercised by employees.

Having a significant part of the North American and global market share for small package and supply chain, they may have reached their saturation limit and this could be an affect on their share price. There is still much work to do for them however especially in the area of forwarding globally, those cargoes that are dependent on extra-company assets, vehicles, ships, aircraft to move.

Gathering the talent is not that hard, since they have the resources and deep pockets to pay for it. Making inroads into the market share of KN International, DB Schenker, Panalpina, DHL Global and many others is the real task and......it can't be done by a fancy commercial.

Recent article discusses UPS's weakness and strengths. At the end of the day, this huge company is still a very strong organization and a viable stock to buy.

newsworthy: Ten years after IPO, Big Brown still trying to deliver – DC Velocity

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Dr. Frank Appel - DHL interview

DHL has not really had a nice time in North America, not for their courier division and not even with their acquisitions of Airborne, Danzas, and Exel. Dr. Appel addresses the mistakes made by the Group in not retaining local management of these companies. Faced with the strong presence of UPS and Fedex, their brand, and their central customer service operations, DHL was unable to establish superior service, customer loyalty or become a registered american airline.

In a recent article from Forbes, the CEO Dr. Appel provides his thoughts on the future strategies of the company. Considered one of the main movers and shakers of the global Logistics industries, he is surprisingly humble in that he does not profess or lecture but actually gives his honest opinion.

"Part of the German postal monopoly, mighty DHL, which celebrated its 40th anniversary last month, lost 1.69 billion euros on revenues of 54 billion euros in 2008. Much of that was due to a bungled foray in North America, where DHL sought unsuccessfully to take on rivals Fedex and UPS." Read more.....

Best Courier

Any company that calls themselves best as their company has to have a lot of confidence and hutzpah. At the very least I can do is post their link here.

Green ambition -UPS tries a one up on Fedex

This is an excerpt from Climate Biz, a website that reports on companies and issues relating to the green solutions.
"Last week, as soon as I sat down with UPSers Scott Wicker, who runs the plant engineering group and oversees sustainability, and Lynnette McIntire, director of global reputation management, to talk about UPS's new sustainability report, they made a point of telling me that UPS is doing a more thorough job of measuring its carbon footprint than FexEd and that UPS runs a more efficient, and therefore less polluting, fleet of aircraft than its rival." Read more...

Courier Wars

Latin American Logistics came up with a fairly good article on the fight for supremacy by the world's couriers.

"All four companies have been vying for global domination of the Logistics Market, but over the last 10 years this struggle has intensified with a systematic stream of acquisitions. Deutsche Post World Net (DPWN), DHL’s parent company, has bought more than 50 companies, mostly in Europe. UPS ever since it went Public has gone on a shopping spree to fill out its Air Express capabilities, FedEx mirrored this move by acquiring ground transportation brands. This break neck speed of expansion and determination to service the entire supply chain along the most important trade lanes shows no sign of abatement." Read more...