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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 Logistics 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, 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: businesses can contract with DHL for all of their shipping, and DHL will pick up all the packages, transport them using their network as close as possible. In the event of a low priority package (this service is called DHL@home) DHL will deliver the package 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 time-consuming 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".

  • 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.

  • 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. *

  • 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 285,000
  • 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+

Associated companies

See also

External links

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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "DHL".

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