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DHL is a company that provides international shipping of documents and freight as well as contract logistics. The company was founded in 1969 by Adrian Dalsey, Larry Hillblom, and Robert Lynn; the initials of the founders' last names form the company name.
The trio initially provided a courier service between the U.S. and Hawaii and expanded the business from there. In 1998, Deutsche Post World Net began acquiring shares in DHL, finally reaching majority ownership in 2001, and completely purchased it in 2002. In the UK, DHL / Deutsche Post AG also acquired Securicor Omega at this time.
DHL's global headquarters are located in Bonn, Germany and London, UK (Exel). Headquarters for the Americas (including the USA) are located in Plantation, Florida, a suburb of Miami, while its Asia Pacific headquarters are located in Singapore.
DHL owns its own cargo airline, European Air Transport. It currently operates out of Brussels International Airport in Belgium, but is in the process of transferring the bulk of its European air operations to Leipzig, Germany.
Major competitors include FedEx, UPS, TNT, and national post carriers such as US Postal Service and Royal Mail. However DHL has a minor partnership with the USPS: In the event of a low priority package (this service is called DHL@home) DHL will deliver the package from the shipper (who contracts with DHL for this service) to the nearest regional USPS post office and the USPS will handle the delivery to the customer's door. This saves the DHL drivers from making expensive trips to residential areas to deliver a single package.
DHL consists of a large group of separate entities, separated usually by business type and country. (DHL Freight & Contract Logistics (UK) Limited, DHL Express (Finland) etc.) There are over 300 separate 'sister' companies worldwide operating under the DHL name.
Outside of Germany, the company is organized in four divisions; DHL Express, DHL Global Forwarding, DHL Exel Supply Chain and DHL Global Mail.
DHL is well known for the ability to offer freight and package shipping service worldwide, even to areas considered by other global shippers as too obscure or risky, like Iraq.
Also, since it is German owned, it is the only courier that will ship to Cuba or North Korea.
History
DHL began as a courier service between San Francisco and Honolulu but in the next ten years expanded to the Philippines, other parts of Asia, Australia, Europe, and the Middle East.
- Early 1990s - travelers in East Africa - perhaps western Tanzania - were able to travel on a scheduled "DHL Bus".
- 1999 - DHL purchased the Dutch shipping company Van Gend & Loos EuroExpress and merged it with its existing operations in the Netherlands.
- 2001 - Deutsche Post World Net acquired a majority (51%) of DHL's shares, and the remaining 49% in 2002. The new DHL was launched by merging the old DHL, Danzas and Euro Express.
- 2002 - Bashkirian Airlines Flight 2937, a Tupolev Tu-154 passenger jet, collided with a DHL Boeing 757 at 35,000 ft over Überlingen, Germany, due to miscommunication from Swiss air traffic control. The 69 people aboard the Tupolev (consisting mainly of Russian schoolchildren) and the two pilots of the Boeing were killed.
- August 2003 - Deutsche Post acquires Airborne Express, and begins to integrate it into DHL.
- November 22, 2003 - Iraqi insurgents fired an SA-7 'Grail' surface-to-air missile at an Airbus A300B4 DHL cargo aircraft that had taken off from Baghdad airport. The missile struck the left wing, disabling all three hydraulic systems and setting the wing on fire. The plane began a dangerous phugoid (vertical oscillation) but the crew managed to land safely at the airport despite only being able to control the plane by adjusting the engine thrust. No other crew had ever been able to achieve a landing in this fashion, though the crew of United Airlines Flight 232 was able to also navigate their DC-10-10 after a similar triple hydraulic failure.
- September 2004 - a planned expansion by DHL at Brussels International Airport created a political crisis in Belgium.
- October 21, 2004 - DHL announced that it would move its European hub from Brussels to Leipzig, Germany (Vatry, France was considered and rejected). DHL's unions call a strike in response, paralyzing work for a day.
- June 2005 - Deutsche Post World Net appointed Mr Stephen Day as Chief Financial Officer of DHL Asia Pacific, and a member of the company's Asia Pacific Management Board. Stephen Day had been with DHL since 1992 and has held a number of senior positions, namely CFO of DHL World Wide Express. Stephen is a seasoned finance executive and long-term DHL-er and prior to joining DHL in 1992 he held senior finance positions in the automotive and banking industries.
- September 2005 - Deutsche Post made an offer to buy contract logistics company Exel plc, which had just acquired Tibbett & Britten. Exel became part of DHL in December 2005. Following the latest deal, DHL had a global workforce of 500,000 people and roughly $65 billion in annual sales.
Outsourcing
Exel outsources the majority of its IT Logistical Work to Indian IT major Wipro. In that contract, the Software Configuration Management Team which consolidates Exel's CI's into a single stream while shipping to the client. On the development side, currently Integration projects are going on to link data from Exel's Logistics Operating System and DHL's. On the support side, important submodules of Exel's Freight Forwarding System are monitored and calls are being answered, patches for the development releases are produced.
Global Facts and Figures
- Number of Employees: around 500,000
- Number of Offices: around 6,500
- Number of Hubs, Warehouses & Terminals: more than 450
- Number of Gateways: 240
- Number of Aircraft: 420
- Number of Vehicles: 76,200
- Number of Countries & Territories: more than 220
- Shipments per Year: more than 1.5 billion
- Destinations Covered: 120,000+
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See also
External links
- Main
- DHL.com - Links to each country's DHL website
- Deutsche Post (DHL Helper)
- Van Gend en Loos Now known as DHL Koerier Netherlands
- Other